Manipulations
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Regina Karl
About this book
To what extent does the production of art require the work of hands? And, reciprocally, to what extent does an artwork enable a tactile understanding of the world? At the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of hands goes beyond the simple gestures they perform: they become an agent, holding at bay technological progress and its implications for artistic creation. On the one side, the hand can itself be conceived of as a machine; often times it figures as a blueprint for technological tools and instruments. On the other side, hands appear to be outdone by the continuous rise of mechanization, challenging the need for the bodily skills and abilities. The ambiguity of the hand as simultaneously a primitive and proto-technological instrument frames the theoretical intervention of this book which investigates the hand in European modernism not as a motif but as medium. It looks at German and French case studies that address literature, sculpture, photography, film, and industrial design. As it turns out the medium "hand" allows to retrace the cultural history of the early twentieth century as an expression of the intricacies and ambiguities that the age of mechanization exhibited in the work of art.
Author / Editor information
Regina Karl, Rutgers University; New Jersey, USA.
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgments
V -
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Contents
VII -
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Introduction: Hands and Technology
1 -
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Chapter One Forming Hands: Surgery as Method in Paul Valéry
22 -
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Chapter Two Picturing Hands: Optical Tactility and New Vision
63 -
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Chapter Three Conserving Hands: Malte’s Notebooks as Recording Devices
109 -
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Chapter Four Moving Hands: Silent Film and Technologies of the Body
149 -
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Conclusion: From Manipulation to Digitization
194 -
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Image Credits
201 -
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Bibliography
203 -
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Index
217
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