| Description |
Written and directed by Judith Wechsler, Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (2016; 60 min.) tells the story of this innovative and influential art historian. With interests that ranged from the Italian Renaissance to Hopi ritual dances, from frescoes to postage stamps, Warburg sought to combine the fields of art history, anthropology, and religion. He explored the afterlife of antiquity, the tensions between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the secular and religious in Renaissance paintings of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Told largely through Warburg’s own words and interviews with leading Warburg scholars, this documentary traces the development of his ideas in the context of his life and times.
Following the screening, there will be a conversation between director Judith Wechsler and Peter Schwartz, Associate Professor of German.
Judith Wechsler is an art historian and filmmaker. She has written and directed 28 films, predominantly on art. Her film The Passages of Walter Benjamin (2014) was made with the cooperation of the Benjamin archives in Berlin and Jerusalem and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She has served as the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor in Art History at Tufts University, taught for many years at MIT, and was a visiting professor at Harvard and the Ècole normale supérieure in Paris. Many of her films are distributed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and are archived at the Harvard Film Archive. |
