Georges Didi-Huberman's 'Atlas' Exhibition Explores Warburg's Mnemosyne as Critical Montage

Georges Didi-Huberman curated the exhibition 'Atlas: How to Carry the World' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, running from November 24, 2010 to March 28, 2011, before traveling to ZKM Karlsruhe (May–July 2011) and Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg (autumn 2011). The exhibition, accompanied by his essay 'Atlas, or the Anxious Gay Science' (third volume of the trilogy 'The Eye of History'), centers on Aby Warburg's unfinished atlas 'Mnemosyne', which Didi-Huberman presents as both subject and model. He argues that the atlas is a visual form of knowledge based on montage and critical selection, distinct from encyclopedias or archives. The show juxtaposes works by Goya, Bruce Nauman, Alighiero Boetti, Mike Kelley, Victor Burgin, Harun Farocki, Hanne Darboven, On Kawara, Gerhard Richter, Hans Peter Feldmann, Marcel Broodthaers, Sol LeWitt, and others, alongside documents and archival materials. Didi-Huberman emphasizes the atlas as a response to political closures after World War I and as a tool to 'reassemble the world' after disaster. He critiques the art market's fetishization of originality and the museum's resistance to showing reproductions, noting that the Centre Pompidou declined the exhibition. The essay was published in 2011 by Les Éditions de Minuit, with the second volume 'Remontages du temps subi' released concurrently.