Art History and Disenchantment: Riegl, Warburg, and a Tupinamba Dance
My paper takes as its point of departure the moment of art history’s establishment (c. 1900) as a historical discipline within the modern academy. To what extent did the intellectual commitments of the discipline at that moment make it possible—or not—to think about the history of art across cultures? In posing this question, I will consider the ways in which two particularly thoughtful art historians of the period, Alois Riegl and Aby Warburg, came to terms with what their contemporary, Max Weber, famously called the “disenchantment of the world”. This paper will locate a point of contact where European art opens up onto other possibilities of knowing by considering a print by Theodor de Bry, based upon Jean de Léry’s 1578 account of his voyage to Brazil, which allows us to reflect upon relations between European and Tupinamba image-use.
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