Certain Wonderful Gestures: Warburg, Lessing and the Transitory in Images

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe essay analyses the relation between Enlightenment thinker Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s theorisation of the status and representation of transitory phenomena in images, in particular gestures, and the theories of early twentieth century cultural theorist and art historian Aby Warburg. Drawing in part on archival material, including an early seminar presentation by Warburg and plans for a conference in the field of aesthetics that make reference to Lessing, the essay traces the convergences and divergences that connect and separate Lessing’s philosophy from Warburg’s thought. Under consideration is also the formation of Warburg’s concept of ‘Pathosformeln’ (pathos formulae) – pictorial representations of expressive gestures. Not only did Warburg inverse core dicta of Lessing’s doctrine, as laid out in his 1766 treatise ‘Laocoon’, which largely restrained the visual representation of transitory subject matter, and the moving body in particular. Warburg’s theories also took shape through modifying and replacing two central concepts of eighteenth century aesthetics and poetics, thus performing an epistemological shift by which the concept of action (Handlung) was narrowed down from referring to a general course of events to a purely kinetic meaning, while also substituting the formerly central anthropological concept of imagination (Einbildung) with the psychological mechanism of empathy (Einfühlung).