Robert Smithson's Ghost in 1920s Hamburg: Reading Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas as a Non-Site

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to read iconologist Aby Warburg's work in relation to Earth artist Robert Smithson's non-sites, as a means of opening up discussion on the function of art as archive, and archive as art. The work with which we concern ourselves is Warburg's final unfinished work, Mnemosyne Atlas (1927–1929), which survives as folios of photographs and notes stored at the Warburg Institute in London. Warburg has always been regarded as a canonical but maverick figure: he was a founder of iconology and the key figure in the revival of the study of Antique art. Our method is to remove Warburg's last project from the domain of his iconologist guardians, placing it in the context of conte..