Chronotopologies of Art History

Abstract

The two books under review complicate our understanding of time and history in interesting and different ways. Inspired by Aby Warburg's investigations into the revival of antiquity in the Renaissance, and his search for what Kurt Forster has called ‘the underlying mechanisms of rejection, distortion, and reversal that shape memory’, the books draw attention to the capacity of images to disrupt linear time and create complex temporalities.1 For Kathleen Wren Christian, whose text focuses on antiquities collected in Rome between 1350 and 1527, the time-bending operations of art are always engaged in social processes. Her text meticulously recreates historical viewers who are passionately involved with the material fragments of antiquity. She imbricates the objects of her study into life as it is lived – filled with desire, obsessions, intrigue, competition, betrayal, dreams, fear of death, and lust for fame. In contrast, Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood's book, which considers...