Goshka Macuga Aby Warburg on Madness and Ritual, set for Scene 2 2014

Goshka Macuga’s multifaceted and research-intensive work is unified by a desire to test the limits of collage and explore the intersections of language, social history, and institutions of power. Aby Warburg on Madness and Ritual, set for Scene 2 is inspired by an obscure, unpublished play written by the seminal German art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg (1866–1929). Titled Hamburg Conversations on Art: A Hamburg Comedy (1896), the play revolves around the clashes between Hamburg’s conservative and avant-garde communities. The imagery in this tapestry draws from Warburg’s writings on Native American serpent rituals, a subject that Macuga references through the inclusion of the Laocoön (a Greco-Roman figure who is often depicted being attacked by giant serpents), the Gadsden flag (“Don’t tread on me”), and the same stuffed python that forms part of a well-known installation by Belgian Conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers. 
Identification
Title
Aby Warburg on Madness and Ritual, set for Scene 2
Production Date
2014
Object Number
2016.46
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council
Copyright
© Goshka Macuga
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Tapestry
Dimensions
106 3/8 x 144 1/8 inches
Visual Description
Aby Warburg on Madness and Ritual, set for Scene 2, by Goshka Macuga is a tapestry from 2014. It measures roughly eight feet tall by twelve feet wide. It is hung in landscape orientation but at an angle, giving the impression that the tapestry has started to fall off the wall. The tapestry depicts a collage of different images and symbols from art history varying from Greek architecture to contemporary painting. From the left moving toward the right as if reading, the first images is is the upper third of a Greek column with a Corinthian Capital. Moving right, next is an image of the famous classical sculpture of Laocoön and His Sons. The three white stone bodies contorting in agony as they are strangled by snakes. Toward the middle of the sloping composition is the word “INSANE” on a black canvas in the interior of a contemporary building, followed by drawings and stencils of women, a contemporary police officer holding a snake, an abstract painting, the Gadsden flag, a painting of a nude man lying face up on a floor. The tapestry is partially hung on the wall with the bottom right-hand corner draped on to the floor.
Goshka Macuga
Goshka Macuga — b. 1967, Warsaw; lives in London
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