Aby Warburg and Nature

About two years ago I became interested in the German art historian, Aby Warburg, after having a conversation about him with a colleague.  I knew his name, but had only a superficial understanding of his methodology and research interests.  I understood that his dissertation presented the idea of iconography, but, my formal studies of the history of iconography had centered around Erwin Panofsky.  Panofsky, like so many other Jewish scholars, emigrated to America in the 1930s and he published the foundational, Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, in English in 1939.  Somewhere along the way, I just never gave much thought to Warburg, something I now regret after having done a little research about him.

Why this blog?

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

– John Muir

What are the intersections between art, art history, natural history, and the natural sciences?  Intersection implies a place, a crossroads, where we can meet to discuss ideas.  And, while that is an apt description of what I hope this blog will be, I think that cross-pollination might be an appropriate metaphor.  Cross-pollination is dynamic and chaotic.  Ideas, like grains of pollen can be encountered, carried, blown about, lodged and dislodged, incorporated into new ideas, and perhaps contribute to a larger and more fruitful conversation about the topic of how human culture and nature interact.

Artists and naturalists share many of the same qualities — in short, they both learn from looking, they experiment, they postulate, they find connections.  (There is more, of course, but that will be the subject of future blog posts.)  Artists have become interested in biotic communities and biologists are becoming more aware of how artists can contribute to scientific knowledge.

My reasons for creating this blog are numerous:

• The topic is important to me.  I care deeply about the natural world and I am intrigued by artists who share these concerns and scientists who have deep knowledge and who are not afraid to display passion for their subjects.
• It is a grand theme of our time.  Human culture impacts the natural world and since the Industrial Revolution the impact has become vast and largely deleterious.  I do not believe that the earth and living things will become extinct, but I do believe that the earth is changing and the greater issue is whether Homo sapiens will have a place in the Earth of the future.
• Art and science is too often misunderstood.  Today (and in the modern era, in general) artists and scientists are often seen as binary, and even contentious, opposites.  This has not always been the case and it does not have to continue to be this way.
• I want to share ideas.  I am an academic and academia, at least in my field, has developed a culture of guarding one’s ideas.  We have been traditionally focused on publication as the primary means of communicating ideas.  The publication process is slow and publishing opportunities have been dwindling in recent decades.  At the same time, the internet has opened new forms of dialogue.  While blog writing is not a substitute for peer-reviewed publication, I do hope that it will be a vehicle for sharing and nurturing ideas.

In future posts I will be writing about artists as the first naturalists, the “Great Divides” (the divisions between culture and nature, art and science, art and art history, natural history and biology), the history of art history and how it connects to the field of natural history, exhibitions, artists who are informed by natural science,  scientists who work with artists, books and media about art and nature, and much more.  I hope you will enjoy and find useful this exploratory journey and that you will also share your ideas along the way.