Lightning Symbol and Snake Dance: Aby Warburg and Pueblo Art

Aby Warburg's Collection of Pueblo Art

Aby Warburg is regarded as the founder of modern art history informed by cultural studies. In 1895-96 he came to America to meet Indigenous Americans. What he saw among the Pueblo societies in the US Southwest made such a deep impression upon him that he returned to it in his 1923 lecture on the Hopi snake ritual—given at the end of a deep mental crisis in a Kreuzlingen sanatorium. This substantial, culturally sensitive, and carefully produced publication presents and examines Warburg’s journey to—and his collecting and reading of—Pueblo art and culture.

2022; hardcover; 8.75 x 11.5 inches; 400 pages; ISBN: 9783775752022.