Genealogy of the Image in Histoire(s) du Cinéma

Abstract

Theories of montage have long proliferated within cinema studies, in attempts to understand and account for the medium's temporality, its mode of address and image repertory. However, art historical and theoretical precedent have rarely been engaged in such discussions, despite the fact that thinkers and practitioners like Gerhard Richter and Aby Warburg have long focused on the format of the atlas and its implications for the spatiotemporal and ‘genealogical’ articulation of art and imagery more generally. Based on a comparative examination of Warburg's last great project Atlas Mnemosyne and Jean-Luc Godard's monumental video-essay-cum-history Histoire(s) du Cinéma, this article envisions what a transhistorical, interdisciplinary and image-based art history would look like, as well as probing its political and aesthetical connotations. Focusing on the Warburgian Pathosformulae and the Godardian ideology of the interstice, a conceptualization of media as self-archiving and historicizing organisms is offered that has as much import for contemporary artistic praxis as for the re-evaluation of the past.