Horst Bredekamp Book order

To a greater extent than still widely assumed, the German scholar Aby Warburg drew, throughout his life, on the lessons of two of its early episodes: his travels of 1895-96 among Pueblo Indian communities in the North American Southwest, and his residence of 1896-97 in Berlin, which he prized as a center for the study of ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology. Over the next three decades, this pioneering thinker was able to affect a fruitful amalgamation of those disciplines with that of art history (in which he had himself been trained): the origin of a form of cultural studies that continues to exert an extraordinary intellectual allure. Quoting from Warburg's diaries, notebooks, and correspondence, this newly translated study throws fresh light on a most eventful journey through the realm of ideas.

Focusing on the concept of "embodiment," this work explores the limitations of the pragmatic turn in contemporary philosophy, which often interprets the world as a projection of the knowing self. It critiques the prevailing notions and delves into the implications of this perspective, suggesting that while promising, it does not fully capture the complexities of human experience and existence. The author invites readers to reconsider the relationship between perception and reality within philosophical discourse.

Horst Bredekamp's subject is the surprising resonance of the image of the embodied state that dominates the frontispiece to Leviathan: the treatise on humanity in its "political" dimension published in 1651 by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Opening with a succinct exposition of how intimately this image is related to some of the fundamental themes addressed by Hobbes, Bredekamp then rigorously pursues the art-historical question of the authorship of the title-page. In the central chapters, the frontispiece is assessed in relation both to venerable visual and intellectual traditions and to some of the scientific innovations of the mid-17th century. The conclusion is devoted to the importance of several of the most far-reaching preoccupations of Hobbes as a profound and original thinker.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton by Frank O. Gehry rises from the Bois de Boulogne as a new landmark in the Parisian skyline. Gehry's dynamic architecture is both glittering and multifaceted: is it a sailing vessel, an iceberg, or a sea monster? It fascinates with its wealth of references and, at the same time, escapes any clear-cut definition. Three outstanding representatives of different generations of art history, James S. Ackerman (+), Irving Lavin, and Horst Bredekamp have together paid a visit to the Fondation Louis Vuitton. They explore the building in three richly illustrated essays that try to fathom the floating architecture of the "magician" Gehry in the context of both art and architectural history.

To this day Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of the „survival of the fittest“ has been visualized with the universal model of a tree of life. But early on in Darwin’s thinking the coral provided a fascinating alternative to the tree as a depiction of the evolution of the species. Horst Bredekamp shows how Darwin, a coral enthusiast and collector, found in it a more adequate illustration of evolution through natural selection: It grows anarchically in all directions and no longer upholds mankind as the „crown of creation.“ Using this example Darwin is proving himself to be both a destroyer and consummator of traditional natural philosophy. Since antiquity the coral had been a symbol of nature as a whole.

Contemporary biographies of Galilei emphasize, in several places, that he was a masterful draughtsman. In fact, Galilei studied at the art academy, which is where his friendship with Ludovico Cigoli developed, who later became the official court artist. The book focuses on this formative effect – it tracks Galilei’s trust in the epistemological strength of drawings. It also looks at Galilei’s activities in the world of art and his reflections on art theory, ending with an appreciation of his fame; after all, he was revered as a rebirth of Michelangelo. For the first time, this publication collects all aspects of the appreciation of Galilei as an artist, contemplating his art not only as another facet of his activities, but as an essential element of his research.

Heavily represented sections of contemporary philosophy subscribe to the notion of embodiment. However promising this pragmatic turn of events may be, it remains limited in that it interprets the world as a projection of the cognizing I. By contrast, Image Acts focuses on the counterforce of the form of images. The book subdivides this sphere into three parts: imitation, substitution, and the pure effect of the form. All three parts are contemplated with examples from antiquity through to the present and the iconoclastic controversies of our times. From this reconstruction of the image act springs the element of a new philosophy of affordance.

Der Band präsentiert eine neue Sicht von Mediävisten unterschiedlicher Disziplinen auf die Kontinuität der Antike in das sogenannte Mittelalter. Er verfolgt das parallele Nebeneinander von Antike und Christentum im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert, das anschließende Fortführen der Antike durch die Westgoten sowie das Beharren in Iberien auf römisch-romanischer Form und Ambivalenz gegen die außerspanisch längst als moderner Stil etablierte Gotik.

Focusing on the baroque Kunstkammer, this text delves into the interplay of art, science, and scholarship in early modern Europe, highlighting how these collections of curiosities reflect the era's intellectual pursuits. It posits that the Kunstkammer serves as a precursor to contemporary cyberspace, suggesting that the ways in which knowledge and creativity were curated and displayed in the past continue to influence modern digital experiences.