Abstracts
Résumé
L’historien de l’art allemand Aby Warburg (1866-1929), fondateur de la Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg à Hambourg (1926) – rétablie à Londres en 1933 sous le nom de l’Institut Warburg –, est célèbre surtout pour son approche originale des études culturelles. Spécialiste de l’art et de la culture de la Renaissance, il a transformé la conception de l’histoire de l’art de son temps en éliminant autant que possible la barrière entre les formes classique et populaire de l’art. Pour Warburg, une forme populaire, telle que le timbre-poste, était en principe aussi riche en tant que message culturel que l’œuvre d’art classique et devait jouer un rôle positif dans l’expression culturelle. Ainsi voulait-il, dans les années 1920, participer à la création d’une émission de timbres commémorant le traité de Locarno, le premier accord de coopération entre la France, la Grande-Bretagne et l’Allemagne, signé après la Première Guerre mondiale. Cet article suivra le processus de conception et de réalisation de ce timbre, prévu pour la poste aérienne et portant l’inscription « Idea Vincit », en soulignant l’importance, dans la République Weimar, de la création dans le domaine public de formes modernes de design.
Abstract
The German art historian Aby M. Warburg (1866-1929), founder of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, which was housed in its own building in 1926, and was re-established in London in 1933 as the internationally renowned Warburg Institute, is best known for his innovative approach to the study of the history of art as embedded in culture as a whole. As a specialist in particular in the art and culture of the Renaissance, his major innovation in the study of the history of art at the time was to minimize the barrier between high and low art, then still firmly in place. Warburg’s study of the postage stamp provides an interesting example of this. Warburg studied postage stamps as documents that could be as illuminating about the culture from which they originated as other “ higher ” art forms. In recognizing their importance as cultural signs, he was concerned that they should be used to positive effect. He hoped, for example, to contribute to the issue of German stamps in the 1920s with a stamp commemorating the Treaty of Locarno, the first European co-operation agreement between France, Britain and Germany after the First World War. The episode of the commission, drafting, and distribution of the design for an airmail stamp with an aircraft bearing the inscription “ Idea Vincit ” reflects Warburg’s view of the role of modernist forms in the visual culture of the Weimar Republic. It also highlights his sensitivity to the importance of contemporary public design, a sensitivity unusual in the realm of art historical scholarship at that time.