Warburg and the Emotive Formulas: Between Pablo Picasso's Modern Nymph and Pina Bausch's Post-Modern Nymph

Abstract

The image of the nymph studied by Aby Warburg, bearer of survivals and support of emotional energy, allows establishing new repertoires and possible concomitances between Pablo Picasso's representations of women and female characterizations in Pina Bausch's dance-theater. The nymph’s Pathosformel is identified in paintings and graphic works by Picasso, as well as in photographic records of Bausch's dancers, whose bodies –sometimes dressed alla ninfale– constitute emotional vectors. In the present paper, the polarities, slips, fragmentations and return to life of the formulae of the past are updated in two new paradigms: the modern Picassian nymph (result of the plastic experimentation akin to the avant-garde and iconographic types extracted from the superlatives of the gesture), and the Bauschian nymph, that alerts the ironic eye of postmodernity and projects its steps towards a nostalgic search for Antiquity.