Pathos formula
Pathos formula is an art-historical term coined by the cultural historian Aby M. Warburg . It is understood to be the representation of formulaic gestures and facial expressions of emotional expression, which are assumed to be universally valid. Historical images are examined to see whether magical, recurring forms and gestures have been handed down.
In his important lecture Dürer and the Italian antiquity of 1905 at the Hamburg teachers' congress Warburg developed the pathos formula for the first time by tracing traces of ancient sign language in the Renaissance: Under the title The Death of Orpheus , Warburg presented pictures by Albrecht Dürer , Andrea Mantegna , Antonio Pollaiuolo and others from the point of view of a historical psychology of human expression. From affects to their cultural processing through dance, struggle or melancholy, signs from ancient times were used in the Renaissance.
Hartmut Böhme sees the pathos formula as the physical expression of a language ( eloquentia corporis ). Cultural scientists like Erwin Panofsky , Ernst Robert Curtius and Ulrich Port took up the term pathos formula and developed it further.
literature
- Aby Warburg : The Death of Orpheus. Pictures for the lecture on Dürer and Italian antiquity. In: Dieter Wuttke, Peter Schmidt: Aby Warburg and iconology. Wiesbaden 1993
- Ernst H. Gombrich : Aby Warburg. An intellectual biography Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt 1970. Reprint for example: Hamburg, Philo & Philo Fine Arts, 2006 (PDF, 2.014 kB), ISBN 978-3865725417 .
- Ulrich Port: Pathos formulas. The tragedy and history of exalted affects (1755–1886). Munich: Fink 2005.
- Marcus Andrew Hurttig: Antiquity Unleashed. Aby Warburg and the birth of the pathos formula. Cologne: König 2012. ISBN 978-3-86335-151-9
Web links
- The unleashed antiquity Aby Warburg and the birth of the pathos formula in Hamburg. Exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Retrieved June 7, 2011