Symbol as an Instrument and an Aim in Warburg’s History of Images

Abstract

It is commonly known that in Warburg’s interpretation of images a key role was played by concept of symbol. Warburg developed his concept of symbol in opposition to purely formal history of life of artistic forms as well as to ideas of the „aesthetic movement” which perceived the epoch of the Renaissance as a expression of harmonious ideal of beauty. According to Warburg the Renaissance was a period of internal clashes, a period of rivaling artistic and intellectual trends that should be explained, in the context of return to antiquity, by reaching to the very anthropological principles of human expression as a means of commanding over „primeval fear”. Images coined in the collective memory, images – dynamograms – which are expressive of fundamental human emotions, remain valid as „points of orientation” in the process of incessant wrestling with the heritage of ancient culture. This paper endeavors to analyze sources of the Warburg’s idea of symbol as a tool that must be used by modern history of art seeking for connections between artistic imagery and other areas of human cultural activity. On the other side the analysis of symbol determined the aim of Warburg’s reflections as a key to grasp the most important mechanisms of description of man’s situation in the world („Orientierung”) and of oscillating of human awareness between magical images which enslaved a man and abstract signs which bore testimony to his command over nature but signaling at the same time the plausibility of atrophy of creative imagination.