---

Das von der Stiftung Aby-Warburg unterhaltende Warburg-Haus in Hamburg führt mit Vortragsreihen, Stipendien und einer Warburg-Professur die Tradition der ehemaligen Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg fort. Mit der Publikationsreihe, in der Monographien und Sammelbände erscheinen, werden die Ergebnisse der Diskussionen und Forschungen am Warburg-Haus vorgelegt.

---

Throughout history, and all over the world, viewers have treated works of art as if they are living beings: speaking to them, falling in love with them, kissing or beating them. Although over the past 20 years the catalogue of individual cases of such behavior towards art has increased immensely, there are few attempts at formulating a theoretical account of them, or writing the history of how such responses were considered, defined or understood. That is what this book sets out to do: to reconstruct some crucial chapters in the history of thought about such reflections in Western Europe, and to offer some building blocks towards a theoretical account of such responses, drawing on the work of Aby Warburg and Alfred Gell.

---

Caroline van Eck, Leiden University, Netherlands.

---