After Afterlife

This chapter discusses the relevance of the terms afterlife and survival in connection with artworks, and how this fits the disciplinary frameworks of art history, history, memory studies, and mnemohistory. Comparing my approach to a standard conception of artworks as memorials from an image atlas of the German 19th century, and to Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, I will argue that artworks are neither memorials nor memory traces of surviving motifs or forces. Artworks are non-dead and lead continuous lives, granted that they continue to exist, materially and semiotically. I will propose that the thinly metaphorical and history-based notion of life supersedes and ultimately cancels the thickly metaphorical and memory-based notion of afterlife when applied to artworks. Theoretical assistance derives from Gerhard Genette and Theodor Adorno. My points are finally visually demonstrated by Thomas Struth’s first edition of museum photographs.