Medea street wide. Aby Warburg’s Pathos Formula Today

In his concept of the pathos formula (Pathosformel), the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg (1866–1929) captured his observation that strong gestures could be unambiguous in their expressiveness, yet ambiguous in their meaning. They can therefore represent either highest triumph or deepest grief. Without an understanding of the context, their meaning remains unclear—though perhaps this would also be the case if the context were known. This becomes apparent when examining the recent political protests in Georgia.

The iconography of these protests can be traced back to the myth of Medea, who was from Colchis, now part of western Georgia. The project examines how ancient and subsequent depictions of Medea are employed in contemporary Georgian protest culture. It also considers the implications of the current use of pathos formulas in relation to Warburg’s theory.

Fig. above: Statue of the “Mother of Georgia” in Tbilisi. Source: Wikimedia Commons, 三猎, licence: CC BY-SA 4.0