Edgar Wind (; 14 May 1900 – 12 September 1971) was a British
interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...
art historian, specializing in
iconology
Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...
in the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
era. He was a member of the school of art historians associated with
Aby Warburg
Aby Moritz Warburg (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the ''Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg'' (Warburg Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later m ...
and the
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cros ...
as well as the first Professor of
art history
Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history.
Tradit ...
at
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
.
Wind is best remembered for his research in
allegory
As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...
and the use of
pagan mythology during the 15th and 16th centuries, and for his book on the subject, ''Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance.''
Biography
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.
He received a thorough training in mathematics and philosophical studies,
[Kleinbauer p. 63] both at his Gymnasium in Charlottenburg, and then at university in Berlin, Freiburg, and Vienna. He completed his dissertation in Hamburg, where he was
Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 – March 14, 1968) was a German-Jewish art historian whose work represents a high point in the modern academic study of iconography, including his hugely influential ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art ...
's first student.
Wind left to teach briefly in the United States for financial reasons (he had a two-year appointment at the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...
from 1925 to 1927), but then returned to Hamburg as a research assistant. It was there that he got to know
Aby Warburg
Aby Moritz Warburg (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the ''Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg'' (Warburg Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later m ...
, 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.
Once in London, Wind taught and became involved with the
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cros ...
, helping found the ''Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute'' in 1937. During the war he returned to the US and remained there, holding several teaching positions, at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
,
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
, and
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...
. He received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
in 1950.
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
Sackler Library
The Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library (‘Bodleian Art Library’ in its shortened form, formerly the Sackler Library) holds a large portion of the classical, art historical, and archaeological works belonging to the Universi ...
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 speak to persons who are getting deaf."
Oxford University's student art and art history society is named after him.
In 2021, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi founded the Edgar Wind Journal (ISSN 2785-2903).
Teaching
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,
[Eisler, p.618] equally at home in art, literature, history, and philosophy, and giving "pyrotechnical lectures." Says one student of 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...
isutterly charming European manner, urbane, intellectual must have been stimulating and encouraging to
is colleagues. Wind was a crucial influence on the young
R.B. Kitaj, who enrolled at the
Ruskin School, 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
Sheldonian Theatre
The Sheldonian Theatre, in the centre of Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1669 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford. The building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, List of Wardens of All Souls College, Oxford, Wa ...
, 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.
Work
Wind's two most famous works are ''Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance'' and ''Art and Anarchy''.
''Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance''
''Mysteries chief aim was to "elucidate a number of great Renaissance works of art".
[''Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance''] 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 "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."
Wind's book has been heavily criticised (by
André Chastel,
Carlo Ginzburg,
E.H. Gombrich, and others) for frequent misreadings of sources and a "one-sided" fixation on the Neoplatonic perspective.
[Ginzburg, Carlo. "From Aby Warburg to E.H. Gombrich." In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 44-46. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989.]
''Art and Anarchy''
In 1960, the
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
invited Wind to present the annual Reith Lectures. In this series of six radio talks, titled ''Art and Anarchy'', he examined why, and how, great art is often produced in turbulent circumstances.
These lectures were later compiled into a book, also entitled ''Art and Anarchy''. 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.
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
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
,
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
,
Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics, an ...
and
Burckhardt
The Burckhardt family alternatively also (de) Bourcard (in French) is a family of the Basel patriciate, descended from Christoph (Stoffel) Burckhardt (1490–1578), a merchant in cloth and silk originally from Münstertal, Black Forest, who rece ...
. 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.
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 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.”
Wind refers frequently to
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
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 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.
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 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
elt�� quality that is so fundamental to it.
Notes
References
* Anderson, Jaynie, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi (eds), ''Edgar Wind: Art and Embodiment'' (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2024).
* Chaney, Edward. "Warburgian Artist: R.B. Kitaj, Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich and the Warburg Institute." In ''Obsessions: R.B. Kitaj 1932–2007.'' Kerber Art: Jewish Museum Berlin, 2012, pp. 97–103.
* Eisler, Colin. "Kunstgeschichte American Style: A Study in Migration." In ''The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America: 1930–1960''. Edited by Donald Fleming and
Bernard Bailyn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1969.
* Gilbert, Creighton "Edgar Wind as Man and Thinker," ''New Criterion Reader'', 3:2 (October 1984): 36–41. Reprint in H. Kramer, ed., ''New Criterion Reader'', New York, Free Press, 1988, 238–43.
* Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. ''Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971
*
"Edgar Wind Dies: Art Historian." ''New York Times''. September 18, 1971, p. 32
* Tononi, Fabio, “Aby Warburg, Edgar Wind, and the Concept of ''Kulturwissenschaft'': Reflections on Imagery, Symbols, and Expression”, ''The Edgar Wind Journal'', Vol. 2 (2022), pp. 38-74.
* Tononi, Fabio, and Bernardino Branca, “Edgar Wind: Art and Embodiment”, ''The Edgar Wind Journal'', Vol. 2 (2022), pp. 1-8.
* Tononi, Fabio, and Bernardino Branca, “Introduction: Edgar Wind and a New Journal”, ''The Edgar Wind Journal'', Vol. 1 (2021), pp. 1-11.
* Wind, Edgar. ''Art and Anarchy''. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.
* Wind, Edgar. ''Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance'', New York, W.W. Norton, 1968
* Wind, Edgar. ''The Eloquence of Symbols: Studies in Humanist Art''. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983.
*Wind, Edgar. ''Hume and the Heroic Portrait''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
External links
The Edgar Wind JournalDictionary of Art Historians: Wind, Edgar (Marcel)The Edgar Wind Society for Art History
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wind, Edgar
1900 births
1971 deaths
20th-century British businesspeople
20th-century British historians
British art historians
German emigrants to the United Kingdom
British male non-fiction writers
Jewish historians
Jewish writers
People associated with the Warburg Institute
Western esotericism scholars