La rationalité cartographique de l’Histoire de l’art: tableaux synoptiques, atlas, diagrammes

International audienceThis article examines the relation between Art History as a discipline and maps, charts and diagrams, i.e. graphic representations that contribute to a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events. Throughout the analysis of three very different examples – the maps and comparative views in H. W. Janson's History of Art; Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne project; and George Maciunas’ charts and diagrams – our essay hopes to demonstrate how “mapping” has played an essential role in the configuration of the discipline's discursive practices, namely with regards to the visualisation and spatialisation of temporal schemes. We suggest that far from being a recent phenomenon, the influence of this “cartographic reason” can be traced to Art History's disciplinary origins; recent discursive changes have only come to make it more evident