“Factions”
Diana Vreeland at The Costume Institute
The reinvention of a repressed tradition in museum display
Master thesis Shirley van de Polder, 5884675
Research Master Art Studies, University of Amsterdam Supervisor: dr. Rachel Esner
Second reader: dr. Christine Delhaye Date: 16 June 2014
Address: Grote Bickersstraat 62B 1013 KS Amsterdam Phone number: 0613441055
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Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 5
1. Beyond myths, into “Factions” 12 Diana Vreeland’s curatorial practice at The Costume Institute
2. Re-experiencing history, re-experienced history 21 Defining “historical sensation”
3. A murder in wax and nature behind glass 31
Spectacle and evocation in museum display
Conclusion 42
Epilogue 47
The intermediary
Bibliography 50
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank various people for their contribution to this thesis. Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor dr. Rachel Esner for her inspirational guidance and feedback. I would also like to thank dr. Christine Delhaye for being the second reader of this thesis. Besides my supervisor and second reader, I also want to thank dr. Miriam van
Rijsingen for her helpful advice during the thesis seminar. I would like to thank Judith Clark, Professor of Fashion and Museology at London College of Fashion for her help in collecting archive material of Diana Vreeland’s exhibitions at The Costume Institute. Special thanks go to Rebecca Erickson and Milan Vreeken for helping me with revising this thesis and making it more pleasurable to read. Finally, I wish to thank my friends Susanne, Joanna, Milan, Mara and Rinke for their support and encouragement throughout my study.
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Introduction
“You’ve got to make something out of it.
[...] laying out a beautiful picture in a beautiful way is a bloody bore.”1
The documentary Diana Vreeland: The eye has to travel from 2011 is a portrait of the rich and adventurous life of columnist, editor, curator and style icon Diana Vreeland (1903-1989). This documentary emphasizes her eccentric appearance, her vibrant behaviour and her versatile career. Especially her work as editor-in-chief at Vogue from 1962 until 1971 was
highly influential within the fashion world.2 However, no publication seems to focus on
Vreeland’s activities during the last chapter of her life, in which she was just as influential as in her previous work.
After being a columnist at Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief at Vogue, Vreeland was invited to become a special consultant at The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York in 1972. Vreeland’s exhibitions deviated from the general presentation of fashion and costumes in museums by transforming dummies into characters, acting out dramatic scenes and incorporating music, lighting design, props and
even scent.3 In her costume exhibitions, Vreeland preferred to combine different mediums
such as costumes, music and art in evocative tableaux because she believed this to be accessible for a wide audience and taught them about historical periods or events in a casual manner. Furthermore, Vreeland sought to avoid using labels by focusing on the narrative power of the presented objects and the design of the exhibition space. Incorporating whole rooms in the exhibition design, Vreeland was convinced that it was only possible to let visitors truly understand a historical period or event if she would create complete evocative historical environments. Vreeland called these environments “Factions”; representations of
historical events or periods staged in a fictive narrative.4
Vreeland’s exhibitions were highly criticised by other costume historians and academics from museum studies. The main points of criticism focused on Vreeland’s more commercial background as an editor-in-chief and questioned her capacities as a museum curator. Scholars emphasized on the fact that Vreeland, a socialite with no art historical
1
Diana Vreeland in: Immordino Vreeland 2011:231.
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Immordino Vreeland 2011: 11.
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Idem: 15.
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degree, was in charge over delicate (art) historical objects. Moreover, Vreeland’s invitation to The Met by former director Thomas Hoving created the general notion that Vreeland’s exhibitions in The Costume Institute were created along the lines of Hoving’s commercialisation of The Met. Under his leadership from 1967 until 1977, Hoving changed the museum’s interior, collection, exhibition programme and museum display in order to make The Met a populist art institution that was accessible for a wide audience. Opponents however, saw the arrival of Vreeland as a commercial stunt of Hoving to attract more visitors with spectacular exhibitions about popular culture. Vreeland’s “Factions” were accused of being historically inappropriate, arbitrary combinations in which the objects lost their
significance.5
Although Vreeland’s museum display differed from the general collection presentations, it seems somewhat biased that Vreeland’s “Factions” were not always taken seriously by academics. Nowadays, the general opinion on Vreeland’s work actually seems to be the opposite: the presence of her work in contemporary fashion curation demonstrates the influence of her museum display. In order to expand the existing research on the historiography of fashion curation, this revaluation of Vreeland’s “Factions” should also take place from a theoretical point of view in museum studies. This thesis is based on the idea that Vreeland’s museum display deserves to be placed in and related to other museum practices from the canon of museum studies.
Vreeland broke with the traditional Modernist museum display, in which the number of displayed artworks was reduced and distractive elements like furniture were being removed. Exhibitions rooms in the so-called ‘white cubes’ were subordinate to the artworks, in order to maintain the visitors focus on the artworks. Vreeland’s museum display was the opposite and used the exhibition space as a whole in order to create her “Factions”. The exhibitions were similar to period rooms: by staging the objects in a familiar way and incorporating the space in the exhibition design, visitors believed to be walking through a historical location without necessarily questioning whether the presented environment had actually existed. This feeling of connection with the past is related to what Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) described as “historical sensation”. During the 1920’s, Huizinga interfered in the debate about banning historical objects from the art museum. He was decidedly against the separation between art and history. According to Huizinga artworks always possess a historical context and many historical objects in museums can be seen as
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artworks because of their artistic value. Huizinga described “historical sensation” as a feeling of immediate interaction with a historical period through the narrative of the displayed
object.6 With her “Factions”, Vreeland sought to create this feeling of immediate contact with
the past. The similarities between Vreeland’s museum display and Huizinga’s concept of “historical sensation” in period rooms points out that Vreeland’s position in museum studies can be understood by relating her “Factions” to the tradition of museum display in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The research question of this thesis will be: to what extent can the museum display in Diana Vreeland’s “Factions” at The Costume Institute be perceived as a reinvention of the tradition of museum display prevalent during the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century? To answer this research question properly, it is first of all important to have a clear idea of Vreeland’s concept of “Factions”. Therefore, the first chapter will consist of analyses of exhibitions that typically represents Vreeland’s notion of “Factions”. The exhibitions that will be the case studies in this chapter are Imperial Style:
Fashions of the Hapsburg Era, Austria-Hungary (1979–1980) and The Eighteenth-Century Woman (1981–1982); both reflect on a historical period. The exhibition Imperial Style
focused on the differentiation of clothing styles in Austro-Hungarian society during the Hapsburg Empire. The exhibition The Eighteenth-Century Woman, represented the luxurious daily life of upper-class women in the eighteenth century. Despite the fact that Vreeland started to use the term “Factions” since her arrival at The Costume Institute, Vreeland’s experiments with merging historical facts into fictional narratives were already present in her work at Vogue. A closer look at her work at Vogue will provide more insight into Vreeland’s vision on “Factions” and give the opportunity to revaluate the general opinion about her work at The Costume Institute. With a less biased view on Vreeland’s “Factions” in mind, the second and third chapter focus on the tradition of museum display and representation of history prevalent during the nineteenth and twentieth century that may be related to Vreeland’s exhibitions. This tradition will be represented through analyses of case studies. These case studies are different kinds of museum display and representations of history that were found in the late nineteenth and twentieth century and are comparable to the museum display in Vreeland’s “Factions”. Moreover, all the case studies demonstrate aspects of museum display that were also characteristic in Vreeland’s “Factions”, namely “historical sensation”, spectacle and evocation. It is important to emphasise that it is not the aim of this
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thesis to relate the earlier mentioned case studies to Vreeland’s work at The Costume Institute. The analyses provided in the second and third chapter must be perceived as tools to understand Vreeland’s work better within museum studies. In addition to this remark, it must also be taken into account that this thesis not claims, but rather suggests a possibility to understand Vreeland’s work at The Costume Institute better.
The second chapter focuses on the concept of “historical sensation”, developed by Johan Huizinga. A closer look at this concept will demonstrate that although the definition of “historical sensation” is unambiguous, it is possible to distinguish several forms of “historical sensation” in museum display and the representation of history. The Musée Cluny was founded in the nineteenth century. From 1833, French archaeologist and art collector Alexandre Du Sommerard moved his large collection of medieval and Renaissance objects to the Hôtel de Cluny, a Gothic palace built in the late fifteenth century. From 1844, the building became a museum with Du Sommerard as its first curator. By placing the historical objects in a seemingly natural environment and order, it was made possible for visitors to ‘experience’ a representation of history, comparable with Huizinga’s vision on “historical sensation” as immediate contact with the past. In contrast to Du Sommerard’s reconstruction of the past, art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg (1866-1929) dedicated most of his research to the “Nachleben” of antiquity culture in later Western culture. His most famous work is the
Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, represented the interpretation of images from antiquity by later
generations in Western society. Warburg believed that the view on historical periods or events was culturally influenced and that the transmission of images from this period clearly represented this. In relation to Huizinga’s concept of “historical sensation”, it is not a historical object but the montage of images presented in Warburg’s Bilderatlas that brings its viewers in contact with the interpretation of history. The main point of criticism on Vreeland’s work at The Costume Institute was that it was lacking historical accuracy. Analyzing Vreeland’s “Factions” in relation to the appearance of “historical sensation” in the work of Du Sommerard and Warburg, provides interesting information about the presence of history in Vreeland’s exhibitions and explains why it is not historically inaccurate.
The third chapter focuses on the utilization of spectacle and evocation in museum display. Although these two concepts are interrelated, the chosen case studies in this chapter will demonstrate that these notions also differ. The famous wax museum Musée Grévin was developed by boulevard journalist, Arthur Meyer (1844-1924) and newspaper caricaturist Alfred Grévin (1827-1892). The museum’s founders promised that the museum display would
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‘represent’ Parisian life with such striking precision, that the wax museum would be serving as a ‘living newspaper’. The Musée Grévin was a product of the nineteenth century culture of spectacles; the rise of modernity was celebrated through several forms of entertainment in
which spectacle was a key element.7 The utilization of spectacle however did not only
celebrate Modernity; the narratives displayed in the tableaux at Musée Grévin were also tools to revaluate the general opinion about Modernity. The dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)-opened in 1877- however were seeking to provide a more truthful image of life environments of different kinds of animals. The famous habitat dioramas are evocative installations depicting the natural habitat of several kinds of animals. The dioramas utilize preserved animals and lifelike props like trees, sand and rocks to recreate the environment of these (extinct) animals. Together with the evocative landscape paintings in the background, visitors were confronted with other parts of the world. In order to avoid misunderstandings, it seems useful to explain the difference between immersion and evocation. The immersive tableaux at the Musée Grévin in the nineteenth century “absorbed” visitors into the narrative displayed, as if they were part of the situation. Walking by the first habitat dioramas at the AMNH on the other hand, visitors were constantly aware of the fact that they were in a museum, looking at a lifelike reconstruction of a situation. Immersion and evocation can therefore be distinguished through the distance that the museum display provides; the uncanny sense of reality provided by the wax figures and the design of the tableaux at Musée Grévin strengthened the illusion of being part of the situation displayed; the illusion of reality in the habitat dioramas at the AMNH were interrupted by windows in front of the dioramas.
Despite the fact that Diana Vreeland was an icon in the world of fashion, her work at The Costume Institute has received little academic attention thus far, which makes this thesis even more relevant. Moreover, recent published works about Vreeland demonstrate many inaccuracies in past publications have only been discovered recently. These inaccuracies are mainly created by Vreeland herself, trying to make her life story more interesting. In 2012, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart has written the first full-length biography on Vreeland called
Diana Vreeland Empress of Fashion. This biography re-examines Vreeland’s memoires from
earlier publications and interviews through thorough archival research. The merge of facts and fiction already begins when MacKenzie Stuart started investigating Vreeland’s date of birth. On her French ‘bulletin de naissance’ and actual birth certificate, the dates of birth differ.
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However, Mackenzie Stuart later states that Vreeland was unquestionably born as Diana Dalziel on September 29, 1903. She was the eldest of two daughters of an American mother, British father and born in Paris. Although Vreeland later liked to amuse others with more adventurous birth scenarios, she always maintained that her French youth played a pivotal
role in her career.8
Talking about her youth in interviews, Vreeland always claimed that her family left Paris for New York in April 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Vreeland did not grow up in Paris, but in New York. Vreeland’s father Frederick Dalziel became a Wall Street broker, and moved to the Upper East Side in 1910, where Diana lived until she got married in 1924. The Social Register states that the Dalziels held on to their house in Paris until 1906, but no longer. However, Vreeland’s memories of a childhood in Paris were not merely imaginary. Until the outbreak of the war in 1914 Vreeland’s mother Emily returned to Europe frequently, and from the age of eight Vreeland went with her. MacKenzie Stuart later points out that between 1911 and 1913, Vreeland has travelled with
her family to England, Scotland and France.9 It is most likely that Vreeland kept many
memories from these trips. This example from Mackenzie Stuart’s publication shows that it is impossible to complete accurate academic research about Vreeland’s life and work by merely focusing on the stories and quotes from her memoirs, interviews and autobiography. The research in this thesis is therefore based on analyses and literature research of secondary sources from museum studies.
Moreover, this research will not only be a contribution to the already existing information about Diana Vreeland, but it will also seek to contribute to the research on fashion curation in general. Although museum studies have a long tradition of research, the existing research on museum display in fashion curation is still very young. In 2013, Judith Clark, Amy De La Haye and Jeffrey Horsley were the first to publish a detailed historical overview on the development of fashion curation starting from the first fashion exhibition
Fashion: An Anthology, curated by Cecil Beaton in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1971. Exhibiting Fashion: Before and After 1971 combines analyses with archival research and
provides basic, but essential information about changes in the utilization of museum display. More research on fashion curation like this publication hopefully brings fashion studies to a higher level. This thesis seeks to do the same.
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Mackenzie Stuart 2013: 11; Koetsenruijter 2013: 14.
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The proposition of this thesis is that Vreeland’s museum display in her exhibitions at The Costume Institute can be seen as a reinvention of an earlier tradition in museum display. Characteristic elements of Vreeland’s “Factions” such as “historical sensation”, evocation and spectacle are related to concepts behind collection presentations from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By revaluating the general opinion on her “Factions” and conducting an analysis of Vreeland’s work in relation to an earlier tradition of museum display, this thesis points out that Vreeland’s exhibitions at The Costume Institute have to be taken as seriously as her work at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. As Harold Koda, former associate curator and now curator-in-charge at The Costume Institute said: “Her big contribution is she made
people look”.10
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1.
Beyond myths, into “Factions”
Diana Vreeland’s curatorial practice at The Costume Institute
Vreeland’s work as a special consultant at The Costume Institute has been mentioned occasionally in articles on curating museum exhibitions. Although most of these articles are quite negative about her curatorial practice, the amount of academic attention acknowledges
that Vreeland’s work is noteworthy within museology and particularly fashion curation.11
Recent research on the historiography of fashion curation by Judith Clark and Amy de la Haye has pointed out that Vreeland’s work, considering the knowledge we now have on the
history of curating, can actually be seen as innovative and ahead of her time.12 This stands in
contrast to the earlier mentioned findings that accused Vreeland of being too commercial in addition to being historically inaccurate in her exhibitions.
In order to understand Vreeland’s position and the importance of her work in museology, it is necessary to analyze her exhibitions from a critical museological perspective, as scholars like Clark and De La Haye have done. Such analysis makes it possible to change the general opinion on Vreeland’s exhibitions into a more well-balanced notion of her “Factions”. This chapter seeks to create a less biased illustration of Vreeland’s curatorial practice at The Costume Institute by describing two of her famous historical costume exhibitions, namely Imperial Style: Fashions of the Hapsburg Era (1979–1980) and The
Eighteenth-Century Woman (1981–1982). Furthermore, to provide more information about
Vreeland’s concept of “Factions,” this chapter will elaborate on her work as an editor at
Vogue. Finally, an overview of the main criticisms on Vreeland’s exhibitions will demonstrate
why her museum display was not always appreciated by other curators and art historians. Into the Hapsburg era
Museum display was a key element in Vreeland’s “Factions”. For example, she used mannequins made by the Swiss manufacturer Schlappi, which were produced in different
colours, such as green and pink.13 Although the colours of the mannequins created an
11
Buick 2012: 99
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Clark, De La Haye, Horsley 2013: 6.
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alienating effect, the composition of the mannequins in tableaux provided the dramatic and especially anthropomorphic effect Vreeland was aiming for in her exhibitions. To Vreeland, the mannequins served as surrogates for the people who used to wear the costumes; they were
the main characters of the narrative the exhibition was designed to represent.14 Vreeland was
against exhibitions that created a distance between the visitor and the displayed objects, but visitors were not supposed to forget that they were in a museum. Therefore, Vreeland insisted that the mannequins should not be placed behind glass, but as close to the visitors as possible
in order to create an evocative effect.15 Vreeland added paintings, carriages and pieces of
furniture as props, sprayed perfume through the air-conditioning system and installed dramatic directional lighting to guide the visitor through sensory instruction. To create a completely evocative experience, speakers were installed in the ceilings of the exhibition spaces. All of these measures were taken to ensure that visitors were being reminded of the
place and time- the exhibition’s historically charged reality- through sensory hints.16
When visitors entered Imperial Style: Fashions of the Hapsburg Era, they passed by a huge chandelier functioning as a hint of the sumptuousness that visitors were about to step in to. When they entered the first exhibition space, they entered a ballroom (figure 1). Like one of the guests, visitors entered this event as they walked over the polished wooden floor. The soft sound of elegant violin music and the scent of perfume floated around the space, as if a lady had passed by. Other guests were grouped together along the sides of the room on the red carpet, wearing gowns and uniforms of utter luxuriousness. Some of the guests seemed to be gossiping about the guests on the other side of the room, while other ladies were secretly admiring the male guests behind their fans. When visitors had passed the guests, the lighting of the space directed them to the final guest in the ballroom: a portrait of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as Sisi, painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The Empress’ pictorial presence in the room completed the conjuring of the nostalgic and evocative sphere Vreeland had wished to create. In other exhibitions spaces, each room represented a theme and had its own design; a different colour scheme, a particular backdrop, grouping of mannequins and illustrative other objects, such as carriages (figure 2). Imperial Fashion was a walk through the life of the Hapsburg era, without the necessity of reading any labels.
The exhibition represented the life in Austro-Hungarian society during the Hapsburg
14 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 231. 15 MacKenzie Stuart 2013: 274, 275. 16 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 231, 237.
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Empire and focused especially on the differentiation of clothing styles.17 For example, the
Austrian ladies preferred dresses with full skirts and sumptuous, costly decorations such as embroidery, feathers and lace ruffles at the décolleté. The style of Hungarian dresses, however, was influenced by Oriental dress and consisted mainly of a short, round bodice with floral embroidered elements, a decorated long skirt with crinoline and small sleeves tied with
ribbons (figures 3, 4).18 In this period, the men of the Hapsburg society usually wore
traditional uniforms, until formal suit became popular later in the nineteenth century. After this point, the possibility arose to vary in the combination of coats, pantalons and richly
ornamented gilets.19 Vreeland wrote in the exhibition catalogue that she wanted to portray the
nineteenth century aristocratic elegance that characterised the empire and these two societies. In order to do so, she implemented the well-known Hapsburg icon Sisi through representing and effectively staging elements that would become evocative portals to the life of the Hapsburg Empire.
Vreeland had learned from her own childhood that dance could reflect social relations. For example, dancing the minuet was seen as a social performance, especially for young unmarried women of the upper-class society, a way to put themselves ‘on the market’ for marriage proposals. In contrast to the minuet, the waltz was the popular music of the nineteenth century, and it was possible to give this dance a personal touch. As with fashion,
music and dance could be and often were portrayals of personal taste.20 Creating a ballroom,
Vreeland represented life in the Hapsburg era by staging an important social event.
A walk through luxury
For her exhibition entitled, The Eighteenth-Century Woman, Vreeland created a romantic and evocative sketch of life in the eighteenth century by using characteristic themes such as war, etiquette, beauty and status. Vreeland’s portrayal of the world of the upper-class in this exhibition was marked by extravagance. Walking by the created tableaux, visitors joined women for tea in their graceful interiors, decorated with the most beautiful pieces of furniture. Other ladies were looking out on their immense gardens with ornaments, exotic flowers and spectacular fountains or on their way to a dinner party in a carriage, wearing their most
17 Cone 1980: 7, 8. 18 Idem: 37, 45, 85. 19 Idem: 106. 20 Idem: 24, 26, 65.
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extravagant gowns, richly decorated with lace or beading (figure 5).21 When visitors walked
over from one tableau to the other, a scent of rose, peach and bergamot passed by. Also in this exhibition, visitors were present at a ball scene. With the sound of pompous trumpet music on the background, visitors passed by the other guests, who were having conversations or danced (figure 6). As Vreeland notes in an interview with André Leon Talley: “A religious pursuit of pleasure was the key to daily life (...) Daring invention was the essence of the 18th-century
woman.”22
Vreeland represented extravagance and disproportion through sensory elements, which she believed could be used to represent this period to her modern spectators. She made use of scent by spraying a perfume called Nahema through the exhibitions rooms. The smell of this perfume reminded her of the floral motif used on furniture, walls, dresses and accessories. She implemented what she deemed appropriate music such as fanfares composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully and excerpts of George Frideric Handel's Water Music. The mannequins, serving as embodiments of famous women from the eighteenth century, were painted in untraditional colours– mauve, yellow, coral, red or cobalt— and these were grouped in pairs on wooden platforms. Although the colours of the mannequins reminded the visitors that they were visiting a museum, the construction of the tableaux created an evocative effect. The mannequins were also surrounded by pieces of furniture and porcelain similar to those Vreeland believed the women represented in the exhibition would have had in their own
houses. The walls were decorated with paintings and tapestries from the eighteenth century.23
Fashion accessories, harkening excess and extravagance, such as peacock feathers, fans and wigs were also displayed. She wanted her visitors, as they walked through the spectacle, to imbibe the daily atmosphere, to be present at dinner parties, enjoy secret dates and take their own carriage rides.
Vreeland’s exhibitions at The Costume Institute were not the first time that she experimented with merging historical facts in fictional narratives. Since the age of fourteen, Vreeland had spent hours cutting out images from fashion magazines to rearrange them later
in other tableaux.24 However, it was not until she started working for Harper’s Bazaar and
Vogue that Vreeland’s became famous for this. Although her creations were officially not
called “Factions” until Vreeland started working at The Costume Institute, her work at Vogue
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Bernier 1982: 6, 7.
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Vreeland in: Talley 1981.
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Talley 1981.
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certainly does give more insight into Vreeland’s concept of “Factions” and demonstrates her notion of history while giving insight into why her exhibitions were criticised for being historically inaccurate.
The making of “Factions”
Vreeland’s career in fashion journalism started at Harper’s Bazaar, where she worked as a columnist from 1936 and then as a fashion editor from 1939. Despite her successful work, Vreeland was not promoted to editor-in-chief when Carmel Snow resigned in 1957. When American Vogue offered her a job, she unsurprisingly left Harper’s Bazaar and started as an
associate editor in 1962. By 1963 she was made editor-in-chief.25 Vreeland’s career at Vogue
started simultaneously with the beginning of the 1960s. Later on, others claimed that Vreeland’s greatest achievement at Vogue was that the magazine managed to represent this era to its own public. “Freedom” and “Youthquake” were Vreeland’s major key words for this era. “Youthquake” was Vreeland’s term for one of the most significant social and cultural
developments of the 1960s, the rise of a youth culture.26 She envisaged Vogue not only as a
depiction of the fashion world, but also as an illustration of daily life, and so, during the rise of the “Youthquake”, fashion, art and music were important representations of this younger individuality. She started organizing photo shoots with celebrities like Mick Jagger, artists like Jackson Pollock and models with distinctive physical characteristics like Twiggy and
Veruschka.27 Yet, in contrast to previous ideals held by the magazine’s management,
Vreeland believed that a sequence of photographs would not be sufficient to entertain Vogue’s readers. She wanted to create spreads that demonstrated the freedom of the 1960s and would
so capture her readers much as she later worked to capture visitors to exhibitions.28 Vreeland
discovered the importance of rhythm and turned the spreads into narratives, photographed on the most exotic locations.
In 1966, one of her spreads, The Great Fur Caravan, was shot by Richard Avedon in Japan with Veruschka as the main character. The shoot was based on The Tale of Genji, a work of classic Japanese literature written in the eleventh century. Uniquely, the spread opened with cinema credits, mentioning the cast and crew of the shoot. In the following twenty-five pages, readers were entertained with a dreamlike love story (figures 7-10). In
25 Mackenzie Stuart 2013: 1, 121. 26 Idem: 202. 27 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 11, 13. 28
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Narnia-esque landscapes filled with snow, Veruschka posed in fur coats, big leather belts and
boots, accompanied by a tall Japanese man in a traditional costume.29 The Great Fur Caravan
can be perceived as fashion photography, a graphic novel and art photography. “Factions,” according to Vreeland’s vision, were narratives inspired by historical sources and represented through fragments from different mediums. In Vreeland’s office at Vogue there hung a large bulletin board on the wall, covered in swatches of fabric, illustrations, photographs, photocopies of artworks and notes with inspiring phrases (figure 11). Vreeland’s “Factions” in
Vogue became kaleidoscopic montages of fashion, art and culture that triggered imagination.30
During the end of the 1960s, however, the executives at Condé Nast problematized
Vreeland’s costly spreads, which finally lead to her resignation in 1971.31 Nobody, including
Vreeland herself, could foresee that during the last chapter of her colourful life Vreeland would be transforming her “Factions” from 2D to 3D.
In her book Selling Culture: Bloomingdale's, Diana Vreeland, and the New
Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan's America, Debora Silverman accuses Vreeland of being a
ruthless wrecker of history and describes her curatorial practice as an “exercise of opulent
fantasies as art museum historical exhibits [that were] distressing and inappropriate”.32
Silverman emphasizes the aesthetic quality of Vreeland’s exhibitions and asserts that her utilization of museum display created an absence of historical accuracy. Counterpoint to these accusations, valid though they might be when viewed in from a purely historical perspective, Vreeland’s own notion of the relation between history and cultural memory and the presence of this tension in her “Factions” demonstrates how Silverman’s critique can be balanced.
Vreeland’s “Factions” in fact can be related to the way historian Pierre Nora describes memory. According to Nora, history is one historical event or period that does not change over time, while memory is the culturally influenced interpretation of this historical event or period. Although they might appear to be two different things, Nora emphasizes that they need each other to exist for, without history, it is impossible to create memories and vice versa. Furthermore, Nora also claims that the rise of democracy has demonstrated that history cannot be one fixed universal story, but actually is a fragmentation of historical facts
interpreted by different individuals.33 If history and memory are interrelated and memory is
29 Mackenzie Stuart 2013: 208, 209. 30 Idem: 186, 192. 31 Koetsenruijter 2013: 15. 32 Silverman 1986: 11; Stevenson 2012: 224. 33 Nora 1989: 8.
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culturally influenced, then this means that the notion of historical accuracy is also a fragmented cultural construction.
As her work for Vogue demonstrates and colleague Harold Koda noted when he talks about Vreeland’s work at The Costume Institute, Vreeland’s “Factions” were not representations of the historical truth, but the idea of that truth, which she thought more
important than actual facts.34 Vreeland seemed to be interested in the associative power of
cultural memory. The combination of media and memories represented through Vreeland’s evocative museum display taught visitors more about history by enlivening various historical facts with fragments of memory. Due to her experiences at Vogue, Vreeland knew her
“Factions” were suited for a wider audience.35
Judith Clark claims that Vreeland knew that in the same way she had inspired her readers at Vogue, she could inspire the visitors of The Met
with a glamorous historical narrative created by iconic objects in an evocative setting.36 Still,
Vreeland has not only been criticized for being historically inaccurate. Her more commercial background and the ideas of director Thomas Hoving (1931-2009) would not bolster confidence in Vreeland’s presence at The Met.
The odd one out
During the 1960s, American museums could no longer count on unconditional financial support from the government. This development meant that museums had to be able to function independently and that a larger portion of their budget had to be generated from visitor numbers and sponsoring (corporate or otherwise). Museum directors now had to speak the languages of marketing as fluently as that of art history in order to attract wider audiences
to cover even their operational costs.37 When Karsten Schubert describes this development he
mentions Thomas Hoving’s directorship at The Met from 1967 to 1977 as one of the first and most prominent examples of a commercially-minded approach within museum practice. Hoving turned the Met into a cultural institute with the capacity to be visited by a broad audience. He re-envisaged the museum as a place of mass entertainment and worked to popularize the collections and its presentations by enlarging those collections while experimenting with new curatorial methods. One of his most famous achievements was the invention of the blockbuster exhibition, mainly focusing on masterpieces from art history
34 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 237. 35 Mackenzie Stuart 2013: 308, 322. 36 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 234, 238. 37 Schubert 2000: 70, 72.
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created for an audience without an art historical background.
Hoving’s master plan of reorganizing The Met also involved The Costume Institute. The Institute had been established in 1946, though the collection had existed since 1937,
when The Museum of Costume Art merged with The Met.38 In 1959 this collection acquired
its own curatorial department within the museum. Clark describes The Costume Institute at
that time as a department, which produced exhibitions that were rarely visited by the public.39
There was no permanent (chronological) display and the institute depended solely on temporary, specialized exhibitions in order to present its collection. The exhibition space of The Costume Institute was made up of six rooms (figure 12). Situated underground, with low ceilings, the exhibitions spaces were not comparable to the large, elegant, well lit rooms for fine art and artefacts that were located aboveground. The six rooms formed a counter
clockwise route, making it only suitable for exhibiting sequences and chronologies.40
According to Schubert, Hoving focused too much on providing spectacular experiences, which in turn drew insufficient attention to the traditional educational function of
the museum.41 He describes Hoving’s directorate at The Met as “A case study in how things
should not be done”.42
Naturally, Schubert is free to express his criticism on Hoving’s approach at The Met, however, when Schubert writes about Vreeland’s work at The Costume Institute from 1972, he incorrectly projects Hoving’s approach and vision onto her work. In describing Hoving’s reorganisation of The Met, Schubert claims:
“Hoving’s terminology is that of the department store executive or fashion magazine editor, and it is therefore not altogether surprising that he describes the head of the costume department, Diane Vreeland, the legendary former editor of American Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, as ‘one of the finest curators the Met ever had.’ In the end, however, her exhibitions were little more than glorified window displays and thinly disguised marketing opportunities for the fashion industries, conspicuously lacking all scholarly insight and purpose.”43
The fact that Hoving envisioned the museum as a place of mass entertainment does not necessarily mean that Vreeland shared Hoving’s ideas, nor can this be accurately assumed through her experience as an editor. Moreover, it seems rather one-sided to claim that
38 Immordino Vreeland 2011: 227. 39 Idem: 15. 40 Idem: 228. 41 Ibidem. 42 Schubert 2000: 74. 43 Idem: 72.
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Vreeland’s exhibitions were advertisements for the fashion world without providing examples from her exhibitions that would validate Schubert’s thought.
However, it was not only the frequently made comparison to Hoving and her background as an editor that made Vreeland’s exhibitions seem like the “odd one out” within museum studies. While Vreeland utilized the whole exhibition space in order to create evocative environments, the prevailing trend in museum display seemed to aim for the opposite. Around 1900, art historian and curator Wilhelm von Bode introduced the simplification of museum display throughout Germany. Influenced by innovations in commercial galleries and exhibitions of modern art, German museums started to reduce the number of paintings on display and removed unnecessary pieces of furniture and wall
decorations.44 This new attitude towards museum display soon became popular in museums
around the world.45 Psychologist Arthur Melton demonstrated the positive effect of a
simplified presentation by focusing on the reception of art by museum visitors published in 1935 and he confirmed that visitors— especially visitors without an art historical background— had a limited concentration span and seemed to take more to time to understand collection presentations when museums exhibited a selection of artworks in a
simply decorated exhibition space.46
One of the most well known examples of this new attitude is The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which opened in 1939 and was originally led by director and art historian Alfred Barr (1902-1981). Barr continued to develop the existing trend of simplified museum display alongside exhibiting so-called masterpieces from the collection in rooms with low ceilings, controlled lighting and neutral walls (figure 13). According to Andrew McClellan, Barr relied on this mode of museum display to convince the somewhat sceptical American public that artworks from European avant-garde were worthy of comparison to
classical masterpieces by Leonardo or Rembrandt.47 During the 1960s and 1970s, a more
rigorous type of simplified museum display called the “white cube” emerged to exhibit works from art movements such as High Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. Brian O’Doherty’s famous publication Inside the White Cube: the Ideology of the Gallery Space (originally published as a series of essays in Artforum in 1976) describes the modern art museum as the ideal site for displaying modern and contemporary art. It was designed to
44
Konijn in: Bergvelt, Meijers and Rijnders 2013: 415.
45 McClellan 2008: 125. 46 Idem: 128. 47 Idem: 130.
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eliminate the external world and to keep the visitor’s gaze focused on the artworks. In order to accomplish this elimination windows were usually sealed off to prevent contact with the outside world and the walls of the exhibitions spaces were painted white so that the artworks
received maximum attention.48 Although her work at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue gives more
insight into Vreeland’s concept of “Factions”, the above demonstrates that Vreeland’s museum display did not seem to match with the general techniques of museum display. In order to understand Vreeland’s museum display within museum studies, the following chapters will study Vreeland’s “Factions” from a tradition of museum display that was popular prior to the emergence of the “white cube”.
2.
Re-experiencing history, re-experienced history
Defining “historical sensation”
The previous chapter described Vreeland’s “Factions” at The Costume Institute and their roots in her previous work as an editor. With this image in mind it is possible to approach Vreeland’s exhibitions in a more detailed and academic manner and understand her work at The Costume Institute within museum studies. This chapter focuses on Vreeland’s “Factions” by examining her exhibitions from a museological perspective. A key element in Vreeland’s historical costume exhibitions is what historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) described as the “historical sensation”: the utilization of museum display to represent a particular historical period or event. Huizinga introduced this concept during the 1920s, therefore, this chapter will first provide a brief introduction on Huizinga’s concept of the “historical sensation”. The previous chapter demonstrated that Vreeland was accused of being historically inaccurate in her utilization of museum display. This chapter investigates Vreeland’s notion of history by focusing on her utilization of “historical sensation”. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to describe various forms of “historical sensation” that can be compared to Vreeland’s utilization of this concept. This will be completed through a closer look at Alexandre Du Sommerard’s work at Musée de Cluny and Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It should be noted that the aim of this chapter is not to demonstrate that Vreeland’s work was inspired by Huizinga,
48
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Du Sommerard and Warburg. These case studies are chosen because they are suitable theoretical tools to understand Vreeland’s work from a museological perspective.
Johan Huizinga and “historical sensation”
Huizinga was a Dutch historian who favoured the positivists of the nineteenth century like Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). He rejected a cyclical view of history by claiming that historical knowledge is subjective and therefore culturally influenced. Huizinga further believed that collections from art museums should not be separated from other kinds of museums. In 1918, the Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond (NOB) published Over
hervorming en beheer onzer musea, a brochure about the organisation of Dutch museums,
which proposed a separation between art museums and historical museums. The NOB considered that historical objects should be eliminated from art museums in order to preserve
the aesthetic value of the artworks.49 One of the statements of the NOB which Huizinga
quotes in his reaction to this brochure, stated that
Even though they are products of the earlier mentioned art disciplines as well, objects that have no art historical value do not belong in the National Museum of Visual Arts. As they can perceived as memories of events or persons in any historical context they are appropriate for a separate Historical museum, which should mainly stimulate the knowledge of and the love for the past.50 [translation from Dutch by author]
Huizinga, however was against this separation. His main objection to the statements in the brochure was that the NOB envisaged a profound difference between a historical museum and an art museum and that art historical value seemed to take precedence over historical value. According to Huizinga, art and history were inseparable. Dividing objects over two museums for the sake of aesthetic value would, therefore, mean that the historical museum would only display historical objects and reproductions of the artworks that according to the NOB belonged in an art museum. He referred to the brochure as a great misunderstanding of
history.51
The way in which Huizinga envisaged history and the past as two different things is
49
Den Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond. Over hervorming en beheer onzer musea. Leiden, 1918.
50
“Voorwerpen, die - al zijn zij ook producten van bovengenoemde kunsten - geen kunsthistorisch belang hebben, doch die als herinneringen zijn te beschouwen aan toestanden, gebeurtenissen of personen op een of ander historisch gebied, behooren niet in het Rijksmuseum voor Beeldende kunsten, maar in een afzonderlijk Historisch museum, dat vooral de kennis van en de liefde voor het verleden dient te bevorderen.” Huizinga 1920: 253.
51
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similar to Vreeland’s work, that positioned cultural memory and historical events as separate entities whose borders impinge upon one another. Huizinga described the past as a form of chaos: an accumulation of pieces of information about specific periods of time. While history, on the other hand, appropriates and assembles this chaos into a complete and universal notion of that past. According to Huizinga, it is this construction of history that leads towards truth
and knowledge about the past.52 “Historical sensation” can be seen as a part of this
construction of history. Huizinga describes this concept as immediate contact with the past through encounters with historical objects. Walking through the ruins of a medieval castle or listening to a composition of Robert Schumann could both be seen as examples of these types
of historical encounters.53 In this postulation of Huizinga’s concept, visitors are affected by
the “realness” of the objects and their historical narratives, which could lead to the experience of a déjà vu moment; and this was all achieved without the necessity of the visitors’ having
lived in the particular period.54 “Historical sensation” therefore depends on the fact that the
displayed object dates from a particular historical period or event, or that it once was owned by an iconic historical person in order to evoke visitors with the given information about the
object.55 The historical object is a physical representation of a historical period or event, but
“historical sensation” is the associative effect that the given information and the realness of the object provide. This mental shift between effect and reality brought visitors closer to the understanding of a historical period because they created an image to which they could relate
the given information.56 When the object triggered associative thinking, these images would
pop up. “Historical sensation” was therefore according to Huizinga, the most powerful portal
to history.57
Although they differ in the formation of definitions, Huizinga’s findings on history are similar to those of Pierre Nora. According to Nora, history consists of facts about an historical
52
Huizinga 1946: 9, 10.
53 “Gij loopt op straat, en er speelt een draaiorgel, en als gij er dicht bij komt, waait u opeens een vleug van
erkennen door den geest, alsof gij even dingen begreept, die anders bedekt zijn onder de sluiers van het leven. Gij zoudt u schamen, het muzikaal genot te noemen,... maar het is een pathos, een dronkenschap van een oogenblik... ge kent het toch, het is immers als motief in duizend sonnetten aangeraakt. Van dezen aard is ook, wat ik de historische sensatie noem.” Huizinga 1920: 259, 260.
54
Hanssen 1996: 149.
55
Hugenholtz 1979: 401, 402, 403, 404.
56
“Het kan zijn, dat zulk een historisch détail, in een prent, maar het zou evengoed kunnen zijn in een notarisacte, terwijl het mij toch als zodanig onverschillig is, mij opeens het gevoel geeft van een onmiddellijk contact met het verleden, een sensatie even diep als het zuiverste kunstgenot, een (lach niet) bijna ekstatische gewaarwording van niet meer mij zelf te wezen, van over te vloeien in de wereld buiten mij, de aanraking met het wezen der dingen, het beleven der Waarheid door de historie”. Huizinga in: Hugenholtz 1979: 401.
57
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event, which is fixed and therefore does not change in time. Huizinga does not describe history as one particular event, but a longer period of time that marks several historical events. However, both Nora and Huizinga understand history as a universal and immutable perception of earlier times. Nora describes memory as the cultural interpretation of history which changes over time while Huizinga referred to this as the cultural interpretation the
past.58 Huizinga and Nora envisage history on the one hand as a fixed whole, while on the
other hand memory and the past embody a fragmented collection of different events and different views on these events.
History and memory are thus inextricably interrelated. Understanding history is impossible without the help of memory, because history, according to Huizinga and Nora, only includes facts, like the date and the persons involved in the historical events. Memory is already a type of “historical sensation”; it provides more background information with personal experiences about the event or period from which the displayed object dates. “Historical sensation” utilizes memory in order to provide connotations of the discussed historical period. Therefore, in order to understand a particular historical period, for example through museum display, it is necessary to select objects that represent the story of an iconic person or event. The selected iconic objects are helpful in the understanding of a historical event or period (invoking its history), because the information about these objects triggers
“historical sensation” (unveiling its associative memory).
As mentioned before, Vreeland’s exhibitions were criticized for lacking historical accuracy. The findings of Nora and Huizinga above have shown that the concept of history is difficult to define and is not independent of memory. As memory is culturally influenced and “historical sensation” can represent memory through objects, it is possible to view Vreeland’s work from the perspective that different kinds of memories produce different kinds of “historical sensation”. Her “Factions” were, therefore not strictly historically inaccurate, but could be understood as representing different kinds of memories. The work of Alexandre Du Sommerard and Aby Warburg demonstrate two different versions of triggering the “historical sensation”. A closer look at their legacy will give more insight on the function of this concept in museum display and its relation to the notion of history and memory. Vreeland utilized different kinds of “historical sensation” in order to allow others to learn more about history from different viewpoints, and the techniques to accomplish this are present in the work of Du Sommerard and Warburg.
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Alexandre Du Sommerard and “Vraisemblance”
During the nineteenth century, systematic classification according to materials in museum display was replaced by both chronological ordering and the creation of evocative tableaux. Although the historical and technical value of the objects was still an essential aspect, the
aesthetic qualities of the objects also received more attention.59 Museum display became
visually more attractive through the creation of ensembles of objects from the same historical period, or even recreations of complete interiors. These “period rooms” evoked the ambience,
or as Lieske Tibbe puts it, the ‘mentality’ of a nation during a particular historical period.60
In The Clothing of Clio, Stephen Bann examines a number of characteristic types of
historical representation from the nineteenth century.61 Bann seeks to analyze the fictional
element in these historical representations, with a concept he calls “historical poetics”.62 Bann
argues that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to represent history because that process of representation already implies a translation, which creates a distance from the historical truth. The fictional element in historical representations is therefore not fake or a-historical, but a serious attempt to represent the historical truth. To understand this, Bann introduces the notion of “vraisemblance”; the resemblance of history through our interpretation of historical
events in a “lifelike” representation.63 The “historical-mindedness” in nineteenth century
museum display depended on certain rhetorical techniques in order to evoke this lifelike
representation. These representations are what Bann proposes as “historical poetics”.64 The
idea of “historical poetics” embodies many similarities with Huizinga’s notion of “historical sensation”. Both Huizinga and Bann claim that the perception of history is created by the interpretation of memories. Huizinga and Bann describe the role of historical objects as representing a historical period or event through our memories of this period or event. These memories trigger associative thinking and create connotations of the discussed period or event.
Bann discusses period rooms, and especially the work of Alexandre du Sommerard in the Musée de Cluny as a central example of “historical poetics”. Alexandre Du Sommerard (1779- 1842) was a French civil servant, collector and art historian. He started his career as a
59 Tibbe in: Bergvelt, Meijers and Rijnders 2013: 250. 60 Idem: 250, 251, 252. 61 Bann 1984: 14. 62 Idem: 3. 63 Idem: 14, 15. 64 Idem: 138.
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collector by acquiring the works of contemporary French masters. In 1825, he sold his collection to devote himself completely to French art from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. His new collection was moved in 1832 to the Hôtel des Abbés de Cluny, a Gothic mansion built around 1490 as the residence of the abbots of Cluny. This establishment became a museum of medieval arts and crafts, displaying gold- and silverwork, stained glass, sculpture, jewellery and textiles. Each of the eight cloisters or apartments covered a single century of French history, from the time of the Franks to that of Louis XIV. The Musée de Cluny was created for a historical reason: Du Sommerard intended to make people aware of
the progress of history through the history of art.65 He implied a kind of priority of the
historical object over the historical text. A collection of historical objects would, according to Du Sommerard, create narratives that would enliven the reading of historical texts. Du Sommerard wanted his exhibition rooms to go beyond the written text, and demonstrate how a
sense of the past could be evoked by these objects as arranged in a particular setting.66
According to Bann, Du Sommerard's museum demonstrates an epistemological break
in historical discourse, which characterized the Romantic period.67 Du Sommerard was active
in a period in which the doctrine of imitation was no longer acceptable, and where truth became a matter of a strategic utilization of rhetorical techniques in order to create a lifelike representation that narrowed the gap between the past and the present. Bann argues that, although historians acknowledged it was impossible to genuinely recreate history, it would be fair to claim that the general historical discourse during the early nineteenth century tried to
represent the past, to quote historian Leopold von Ranke, “as it really happened”68 Each
cloister in Musée de Cluny housed various pieces of furniture, costumes, gold- and silverwork, and weapons. Du Sommerard tried to arrange these objects according to their functional or symbolic value- reconstructing, for example the interiors of houses or military harness and equipment. The museum and the presentation of its collection offered visitors not only a rational approach to history, but an emotional one as well, transporting them through imagination back into the past. This is exactly what Huizinga and Bann understand in their
own terms as “historical sensation” and “historical poetics”.69
65 Lotha, Gloria. Encyclopedia Britannica. Published in 2013. Accessed on April 22, 2014.<
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/122586/Cluny-Museum> 66 Bann 1984: 253. 67 Idem: 255. 68 Idem: 265. 69
Griener, Pascal. Oxford Art Online. Date of publication unknown. Accessed on April 25 2014<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T024270>
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One of the most described cloisters was the Room of François I (figure 14). The power of “historical sensation” in the museum display of this period room is the creation of a historically accurate ambience. The condition, place and presentation of the objects are so lifelike that it seems as if this room must have indisputably been the room of François I. The objects displayed not only look like those owned by François I, but they are also still in very good condition and presented as if he had only just used these objects and recently walked out of the room. Bann mentions that the objects are all from around the same period, and that they are typical objects one would expect to find in such a room (objects such as pieces of armour, gaming dices and books). On the right of the image are two suits of armour placed face-to-face with a game of chess on the table between them. Since the suits of armour are positioned as if they are actually playing a game of chess, the scene takes on anthropomorphic proportions and aspect. Positioned behind the suits of armour, the doorway is open and offers a view into the next room, which shows a similar interior. This museum display provides the illusion of a total historical environment: further enhancing the illusion that one is actually walking through the house of François I. The portrait above the doorway, which Bann describes as presumably a portrait of François I himself, makes the experience of “historical sensation” complete. Wherever visitors stand, François I is keeping an eye on them. When they come in or move over to the next room, François’ gaze greets or says goodbye to the visitors.70
To take this discussion back to the curatorial practice of Vreeland, then we can understand that when visitors entered Imperial Style: Fashions of the Hapsburg Era, they entered a ballroom (figure 1). Along the beige painted walls were groups of mannequins standing on small platforms that were decorated with bright red carpet. The costumes that the mannequins wore were made from different types of fabric and were sumptuously decorated with lace, beading, feathers and diamonds. Due to the fact that the costumes were still in good condition, it looked as if they were actually new. Grouping the mannequins in different poses created anthropomorphic scenes and made it seem as if the mannequins were gossiping or secretly admiring someone else at the other side of the room. Although Vreeland, in this space, kept the museum display very simple, it came down to little details such as the red carpet, the chandelier in front of the entrance, the good condition of the costumes and the grouping of the mannequins which gave visitors the idea that they were looking at a lifelike representation of a ball from the nineteenth century. Just as in Du Sommerard’s Room of
70
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Francois I, the thoughtful museum display created “historical sensation”. Both Du
Sommerard and Vreeland created scenes according to the Rankean idea of history “as it really happened”. The condition of the objects and the positioning of suits of armour and mannequins created anthropomorphic scenes, which in the case of Imperial Style was strengthened by the further use of instructive lightning and evocative smell and music. These additional sensory cues provided an overwhelming and immediate contact with the past not unlike what Huizinga mentions in his description of the “historical sensation”. Entering the
Room of François I and Imperial Style meant (re)experiencing history.
Aby Warburg and the “Wanderstraßen des Geistes”
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, knowledge about
imagination and images became an important focus point of study within the humanities.71
Aby Warburg (1866-1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who became famous for his private library of cultural studies, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek
Warburg in Hamburg (from 1944 Warburg Institute in London).72 The focus of his research, and thus the main part of his library collection, was dedicated to the “nachleben” of antiquity in Western culture. Warburg tried to understand the transmission of thought and he called this the “wanderstraßen des geistes” (paths taken by the mind) from classical antiquity to
renaissance Europe and beyond to contemporary art.73 Warburg believed that this
transmission of thought could be studied best through “bilderwanderungen” (the journeys of images), literal and metaphorical. By focusing on the different interpretations and functions of artworks that emerged in classical antiquity, Warburg wanted to understand these evolutions in thinking and present his findings to others in order to let them continue with this research. Dorothea McEwan points out that despite Warburg’s own insistence on being an “image or picture historian” and not an art historian, he used the label “historian” (certainly not in a Rankean sense showing a linear development of historical understanding) as a way to demonstrate how people in different periods of time changed their visions on the meaning of particular images because they tried to interpret historical sources from their (respective)
“contemporary” points of view.74
Warburg’s most famous work in this type of research is the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne.
71 Didi-Huberman 2010: 17. 72 McEwan 2006: 244. 73 Ibidem. 74 McEwan 2006: 243.
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Georges Didi-Huberman describes the Bilderatlas as a visual form of knowledge, and a knowledgeable form of seeing. The atlas consists of plates on which images are arranged and
that we consult by wandering from plate to plate.75 The Bilderatlas was a construction of
wooden boards covered in a black cloth, displaying montages of images from different scientific fields and (art) historical periods that represent the transmission of the classical period in later Western culture. On these tableaux, which Warburg called “tafeln”, images
were added, removed, arranged and rearranged (figure 15).76 The atlas, according to Warburg,
was a powerful visual form of knowledge because it triggered our imagination, which activated more quickly than rational thinking, through of the power of montage. The images in the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne may at first look like a collection of images arranged in an intuitive order, but it was the “tafeln” as a whole composition that triggered the imagination. Like a constellation of stars, it was the hidden meaning between the images that provided new
findings in (art) history and anthropology.77 To place this constellation within Warburg’s
understanding of the psyche, the imagination accepts the multiple and constantly renews it in
order to detect new relations and new montages.78 Just like Warburg, Huizinga was convinced
that imagination was the motor of historical understanding.79
Hal Foster argues that Warburg, through his “dialectics of seeing” exposes an
inexhaustible memory-structure.80 Memory, in this sense, should not be understood as the act
of memorizing, but rather as an overview of the incorporation of “contemporary” views on historical sources (in the case of the Bilderatlas images). More precisely, Foster describes Warburg’s Bilderatlas as a method to defend the images from historical continuity, which functions according to a linear development and leaves no room for views that go against this
linear development.81 Like Nora’s definition of memory and Huizinga’s definition of the past,
Warburg defined memory as a chaos of different thoughts, and through analyzing the combination of images he tried to expose different ways of seeing and thinking, as opposed to organizing or reconstructing them.
Warburg, with the help of imaginary dots and lines, tried to supply the guiding
75 Idem: 14, 16. 76 Didi-Huberman 2010: 20. 77 Idem: 24. 78 Idem: 16. 79 Hanssen 1996: 151. 80 Foster 2002: 81. 81 Idem: 86.
