For the presentation at KU Leuven, Belgium at Prof. Barbara Baerts Seminar on Iconologyr, 19.2.2015.

ABY WARBURG AND THE MNEMOSYNE ATLAS: VISUAL EDUCATION AND THE ROLE IMAGE
CONSTELLATIONS PLAYED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ICONOLOGY.
Between 1913-1929 the German Art Historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and his associates at the
Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (K.B.W) in Hamburg worked with a series of visual
displays surveying the survival of
Antiquity, of which the different
versions of the Mnemosyne Atlas are the
most famous. Only photographs remain
of their work with reproduced material
pinned to hessian stretched wooden
frames; A work that according to
Warburgs assistant Fritz Saxl would
turn many German heads and
revolutionize art history. In my talk I
will first give a contextualizing and
thematic introduction to the atlas-project,
as well as discuss some of the many
problems that haunt the most common
WIA III. 108.9, no. 23 Besuch Rothaker Taf. II
interpretations of Warburgs famous
(16.07.1927)
atlas. In the second part of my talk I will
discuss the atlas as a normal scientific object that helped the thought collective in Hamburg to manage
large data sets, frame and sum up history, as well as a pedagogical tool that shaped the theoretical and
methodological outcome of the K.B.W.

Biography:
Joacim Sprung is a senior lecturer, as well as Coordinator of the International Master's programme in
Visual Culture, at the Division of Art History and Visual Studies, Lund University, Sweden. He has
taught at Copenhagen University and the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. He
teaches mainly within the fields of Art historiography, Aesthetics and Visual Culture. Worth
mentioning is that he also has a Masters of Fine Art and sporadically do artistic work. Sprungs
doctoral dissertation dealt with Aby Warburg, the Mnemosyne Atlas and the visualization of art
history around 1800/1900. His current research is concentrated on how Art History became
popularized as an academic discipline, and profession, via TV-documentaries from the 1960s to the
present. Currently, he is writing a book on the students that attended Warburg's seminars between
1925-1927. The focus is on the reception of Warburg's method by K.B.Ws students and the overall
construction of a specific Hamburgian art historical outlook. His most recent publications are:
Sprung, Joacim, Ways of losing oneself in an image. Notes on Aby Warburg and the artistic
investigations of Elsebeth Jrgensen. In: Elsebeth Jrgensen. Bergen: Bergen Kunsthall, Dublett vol.
3, 2015, 10p.
Sprung, Joacim: Aby Warburg: Bildatlas, skdning och reproduktion [Eng. Transl.: "Aby Warburg:
Picture atlas, visual education and reproduction"]. In: Hfter for Gstfrihed Nr. 8/9, 2014, 14p.
Sprung, Joacim: Aby Warburgs bildsyn, Mnemosyne och studiet av informella medier [Eng. Transl.:
"Aby Warburg's ecology of images, Mnemosyne and the study of informal media"]. In: Hfter for
Gstfrihed Nr. 8/9, 2014, 48p.