Description:
Originally published in French in 2002, examines the life and work of art historian Aby Warburg. Demonstrates the complexity and importance of Warburg's ideas, addressing broader questions regarding art historians' conceptions of time, memory, symbols, and the relationship between art and the rational and irrational forces of the psyche.
Brief description: Georges Didi-Huberman is on the faculty of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. His books in English include Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration; Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière; and Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, the last also published by Penn State University Press.
Review Quotes:
"When Georges Didi-Huberman's The Surviving Image was first published in French, it transformed the image of Warburg as the scholar immersed in the arcana of Renaissance magic, art, and philosophy, and he gained his place as a theorist, urgently questioning the nature of inquiry into art history and visual culture. Ostensibly about Warburg, the range and significance of this key work of art theory and historiography is far wider, for it deals with important philosophical questions to do with art, memory, time, and the construction of art-historical knowledge. Harvey Mendelsohn has created a lucid and elegant translation, an admirable accomplishment that will ensure that this book gains the wider readership it deserves."
--Matthew Rampley, author of The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847-1918