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this distance carries with it certain benefits for the scholarly approach to art; “detachment brought freshness and breadth, and a freedom from prejudice, a willingness to explore the unfamiliar, even the repulsive, and to risk new adventures of sensibility.” At the same time, however, art has lost its ability to resonate at levels deeper than the intellect, to incite the passions. Engaging with a work of art has become an act of mere observation as opposed to “vital participation.” Art has, for Wind, gained interest at the expense of potency.
410:. Particular emphasis is placed on Plato's distrustful view of the imagination as fundamentally uncontrollable; Plato explicitly denied the true artist a place in his imagined ideal republic, not for lack of respect for the artist's talent but out of fear for his capacity to upset the social balance. Wind also notes the repeated historical coincidence – in Greece at Plato's time and in Italy during the Renaissance – of peaks in artistic accomplishment with political turmoil and breakdown.
391:. In it he notes that, over time, public audiences have lost their capacity for an immediate and visceral response to art. The production and appreciation of art, he observes, has become marginalized and domesticated to a point where it can no longer significantly and lastingly move its addressees. Wind's impulse in the piece is apparently restorative; he seeks to impede the observed tendency toward apathy and recover some of art's latent anarchic quality.
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Wind's at Smith, "his
Hamburg accent and his puckish smile ... remain the most delightful memories...his...charisma...is the quality that made the greatest impression... utterly charming European manner, urbane, intellectual must have been stimulating and encouraging to " Wind was a crucial influence on the young
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chief aim was to "elucidate a number of great
Renaissance works of art". He maintained that "ideas forcefully expressed in art were alive in other areas of human endeavor". His thesis was that "the presence of unresolved residues of meaning is an obstacle to the enjoyment of art", and he attempted to
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is dedicated to him, where his works are stored. Wind, although considered a classicist and
Renaissance expert, staunchly defended modern art, unlike many of his colleagues: "If modern art is sometimes shrill," he said, "it is not the fault of the artist alone. We all tend to raise our voices when we
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By way of resolution, Wind suggests an intermediate and integrative approach, supplementing the tolerance afforded by aesthetic detachment with an insistence on personal assessment on behalf of the work's audience: “We should react to a work of art on two levels: we should judge it aesthetically in
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in isolating the particular change that art has undergone: “when art is removed to a zone of safety, it may still remain very good art indeed, and also very popular art, but its effect on our existence will vanish.” Art has thus, according to Wind, moved to life's periphery. Again, Wind notes that
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Wind notes, however, that the recent surplus of artwork available to the public eye has to some extent anesthetized the audience to art at large. Wind is quick to acknowledge that society maintains a broad and active concern with art as well as increasingly refined faculties with which to interpret
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Wind was an enthusiastic and respected lecturer at many institutions. He was a key example of the encyclopedic phenomenon of the "Warburgian scholar" in the
American academic scene, equally at home in art, literature, history, and philosophy, and giving "pyrotechnical lectures." Says one student of
317:, Oxford in early 1957, introducing him to the work and legacy of Aby Warburg. He personally encouraged Kitaj, inviting him to tea with him and his wife, Margaret, at his flat in Belsyre Court. Someone who in 1967 attended his Oxford lectures on the Sistine ceiling recalls the packed house at the
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its own terms, but we should also decide whether we find those terms acceptable.” As such, Wind indicates that the intellectual advantages of the contemporary approach to art may be retained without sacrificing the “directly ” quality that is so fundamental to it.
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He received a thorough training in mathematics and philosophical studies, both at his
Gymnasium in Charlottenburg, and then at university in Berlin, Freiburg, and Vienna. He completed his dissertation in Hamburg, where he was
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such work. Yet this interest is a significant dilution of the passion with which art was received in the past: “We are much given to art, but it touches us lightly…art is so well-received because it has lost its sting.”
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In 1955, Wind returned to
England and became Oxford University's first professor of art history, a position he occupied until his retirement in 1967. He died in London. A reading room in Oxford's new
351:"help remove the veil of obscurity which not only distance in time...but a deliberate obliqueness in the use of metaphor has spread over some of the greatest Renaissance paintings."
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Wind begins his argument by presenting the long-standing conceptual correlation between art and forces of chaos or disorder, citing a lineage of thinkers and artists including
321:, the vast erudition behind the tracing of the "theology" of Michelangelo's figures, and simply the excitement of learning about the order of one Renaissance world picture.
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Wind was born in Berlin, Germany, one of the two children of
Maurice Delmar Wind, an Argentinian merchant of Russian Jewish ancestry, and his Romanian wife Laura Szilard.
259:, and was instrumental in moving the Warburg Library out of Germany to London during the Nazi period. Warburg's influence on Wind's own methods was significant.
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Ginzburg, Carlo. "From Aby
Warburg to E.H. Gombrich." In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 44-46. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989.
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Wind left to teach briefly in the United States for financial reasons (he had a two-year appointment at the
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from 1925 to 1927), but then returned to
Hamburg as a research assistant. It was there that he got to know
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Chaney, Edward. "Warburgian Artist: R.B. Kitaj, Edgar Wind, Ernst
Gombrich and the Warburg Institute." In
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in 1937. During the war he returned to the US and remained there, holding several teaching positions, at
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Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts
109:Ă„sthetischer und kunstwissenschaftlicher Gegenstand. Ein Beitrag zur Methodologie der Kunstgeschichte
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invited Wind to present the annual Reith Lectures. In this series of six radio talks, titled
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In 2021, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi founded the Edgar Wind Journal (ISSN 2785-2903).
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Tononi, Fabio, and Bernardino Branca, “Introduction: Edgar Wind and a New Journal”,
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Oxford University's student art and art history society is named after him.
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Eisler, Colin. "Kunstgeschichte American Style: A Study in Migration." In
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Tononi, Fabio, and Bernardino Branca, “Edgar Wind: Art and Embodiment”,
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during the 15th and 16th centuries, and for his book on the subject,
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era. He was a member of the school of art historians associated with
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These lectures were later compiled into a book, also entitled
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Tononi, Fabio, “Aby Warburg, Edgar Wind, and the Concept of
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Anderson, Jaynie, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi (eds),
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The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America: 1930–1960
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Once in London, Wind taught and became involved with the
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598:, 3:2 (October 1984): 36–41. Reprint in H. Kramer, ed.,
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Kerber Art: Jewish Museum Berlin, 2012, pp. 97–103.
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Edgar Wind, Art and Anarchy, Faber and Faber, 1963, p. 9
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641:: Reflections on Imagery, Symbols, and Expression”,
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Gilbert, Creighton "Edgar Wind as Man and Thinker,"
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703:Dictionary of Art Historians: Wind, Edgar (Marcel)
678:The Eloquence of Symbols: Studies in Humanist Art
190:; 14 May 1900 – 12 September 1971) was a British
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268:Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute
609:. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971
797:People associated with the Warburg Institute
354:Wind's book has been heavily criticised (by
221:Wind is best remembered for his research in
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294:speak to persons who are getting deaf."
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602:, New York, Free Press, 1988, 238–43.
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762:20th-century British businesspeople
231:Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance.
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671:Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
546:Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
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342:Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
331:Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
210:as well as the first Professor of
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629:"Edgar Wind Dies: Art Historian."
578:Obsessions: R.B. Kitaj 1932–2007.
329:Wind's two most famous works are
16:British art historian (1900–1971)
782:British male non-fiction writers
687:. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
680:. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983.
666:. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.
634:. September 18, 1971, p. 32
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767:20th-century British historians
591:. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1969.
587:. Edited by Donald Fleming and
194:art historian, specializing in
571:Edgar Wind: Art and Embodiment
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673:, New York, W.W. Norton, 1968
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802:Western esotericism scholars
734:Resources in other libraries
685:Hume and the Heroic Portrait
253:University of North Carolina
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645:, Vol. 2 (2022), pp. 38-74.
573:(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2024).
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50:12 September 1971 (aged 71)
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659:, Vol. 1 (2021), pp. 1-11.
417:Wind refers frequently to
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698:The Edgar Wind Journal
657:The Edgar Wind Journal
650:The Edgar Wind Journal
643:The Edgar Wind Journal
313:, who enrolled at the
284:Guggenheim Fellowship
276:University of Chicago
97:University of Hamburg
600:New Criterion Reader
596:New Criterion Reader
493:"Edgar Wind Society"
266:, helping found the
138:University of Oxford
272:New York University
86:Academic background
639:Kulturwissenschaft
319:Sheldonian Theatre
248:'s first student.
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264:Warburg Institute
216:Oxford University
208:Warburg Institute
192:interdisciplinary
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212:art history
204:Aby Warburg
200:Renaissance
124:Art History
63:Nationality
34:14 May 1900
746:Categories
720:Edgar Wind
564:References
451:kent.ac.uk
408:Burckhardt
404:Baudelaire
348:Mysteries'
311:R.B. Kitaj
165:Edgar Wind
120:Discipline
92:Alma mater
25:Edgar Wind
444:"Ed Wind"
286:in 1950.
236:Biography
196:iconology
456:10 April
304:Teaching
223:allegory
206:and the
198:in the
66:British
717:about
620:22 May
400:Goethe
278:, and
104:Thesis
77:, 1950
71:Awards
53:London
37:Berlin
447:(PDF)
430:Notes
419:Hegel
396:Plato
622:2006
458:2023
406:and
333:and
325:Work
47:Died
31:Born
378:BBC
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