Mnemosyne Montage, Didactic Panels and Glass Easels: Plausible Approaches

Abstract

This essay presents the hypothesis of a relationship between the thought of Lina Bo Bardi and that of Aby Warburg at specific times of their intellectual production: the unfinished organization of the Mnemosyne Atlas by Warburg, and the Didactic Panels and glass easels by Lina Bo Bardi. The paper deals with the coincidence of thought regarding the concern of both intellectuals with the use of images of our culture for the production of ambiances that would promote the encounter with the new; encourage the remembrance of imaginary; and configure art as a set of constituent images of human culture which is expressed differently by different people of the world and which is not understood as a chronology that organizes the "aesthetic progress" of humanity, necessarily based on learning about beauty and taste, which is restricted to literate and experts. The idea is to put these two thinkers of the twentieth century into the perspective of the non-aesthetic vision of art and culture that characterized their work.