I'm puzzled by the comments on this very interesting post. Is Warburg's work to be dismissed simply because he was a rich individual from a family of (Jewish) bankers? I prefer to consider his efforts in the context of his time: against the background of the growing Nazi intolerance and iconoclasm. At least he used his wealth to fund a scholarly passion, and he left a body of theoretical work and a collection that reflects his research and the intellectual environment of his time. It is there for us to engage with critically. Dismissing it because it came from a privileged bourgeois background seems to me to be too simplistic.
I'd have to do a study but I don't think most wealthy people devote their funds to books or culture. I'd like to have Jeff Bezos' yacht expenditures go to something as worthy as Warburg.
One has to laugh at the empowered circle of society declaring what is culture, noble and good. What else can you do? If all do not have equal access to such opportunity then by definition this is perceptual palsy. Money loves money and little else, making one feel sorry for the wealthy, its over arching power so often all-deceiving. Better to be humble and poor than arrogant and rich.
If you have enough $$$ you can have a library that establishes your ideas. What caught my eye on this was all the books that have been written about it. My footnotes are just a few. And the journal. I wonder how long this will be influential?
This one I looked at as an e-book: McEwan, Dorothea. Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2023.
Yes to your first sentence. For my money this invalidates their perspective defining culture....it's just an idea they nurture to sustain the boundaries of their fearful world. Reminds one of the old flat earth maps, which on the fringes simply ended in white space and on which was printed, at least on one version, "There Be Dragons." . . . .the correction into which we are rapidly headed will no doubt exert an 'adjusting effect' on many topics such as this.
I'm puzzled by the comments on this very interesting post. Is Warburg's work to be dismissed simply because he was a rich individual from a family of (Jewish) bankers? I prefer to consider his efforts in the context of his time: against the background of the growing Nazi intolerance and iconoclasm. At least he used his wealth to fund a scholarly passion, and he left a body of theoretical work and a collection that reflects his research and the intellectual environment of his time. It is there for us to engage with critically. Dismissing it because it came from a privileged bourgeois background seems to me to be too simplistic.
I'd have to do a study but I don't think most wealthy people devote their funds to books or culture. I'd like to have Jeff Bezos' yacht expenditures go to something as worthy as Warburg.
One has to laugh at the empowered circle of society declaring what is culture, noble and good. What else can you do? If all do not have equal access to such opportunity then by definition this is perceptual palsy. Money loves money and little else, making one feel sorry for the wealthy, its over arching power so often all-deceiving. Better to be humble and poor than arrogant and rich.
If you have enough $$$ you can have a library that establishes your ideas. What caught my eye on this was all the books that have been written about it. My footnotes are just a few. And the journal. I wonder how long this will be influential?
This one I looked at as an e-book: McEwan, Dorothea. Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2023.
Yes to your first sentence. For my money this invalidates their perspective defining culture....it's just an idea they nurture to sustain the boundaries of their fearful world. Reminds one of the old flat earth maps, which on the fringes simply ended in white space and on which was printed, at least on one version, "There Be Dragons." . . . .the correction into which we are rapidly headed will no doubt exert an 'adjusting effect' on many topics such as this.
Epic bit of work in that library. Thanks.