Tangled Paths : A Life of Aby Warburg

Author: Hans C Hoenes

History of art / art & design styles

Published on 1 March 2024 by REAKTION BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 256 pages, 45 illustrations
241 x 167 x 29mm | 614g

Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg, one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting Warburg’s many projects and identities – ground-breaking historian, public intellectual, ethnographer, shrewd academic administrator and founder of a library – Hans C. Hönes explores not only the vagaries of an academic career but the personal demons of a man who relentlessly sought to live up to his own expectations. This biography – the first in English for over fifty years – presents an evocative and richly detailed portrait of Warburg’s personality and career, and of his attempts to make sense of the tangled paths of his life.