Thinking Bodies Shaping Hands

Description

Thinking Bodies - Shaping Hands focuses on the critical as well as historical dimension of the handling of the brush and of the resulting appearance of colour on the painted surface in art and art theory from the middle of the 17th (above all from 1660) to the dawn of the 18th century in the Netherlands. More specifically, it deals with Rembrandt’s last pupils such as Arent de Gelder. „Handeling” describes an active, embodied process that is connected to the motion of the hand with the brush or with any other kind of tool. This term, up to now not sufficiently appreciated in scholarly literature, seems to be fruitful in this context. It is not so much connected with the term „style”, as with a prior step, which is equivalent to „manner”. At the same time, its meaning in Dutch till today is „action”. „Handeling” is an act that could be described as a „form-act”. It focuses on Formgestaltung, in which these actions themselves are understood as processes. Examining the „Rembrandtist ideology of painting”, this study attempts to reveal the embodied process of painting in the sense of a bodily articulation during the application of colour. This occurs within the productive tension between theory and practice. Contents Acknowledgements Figures Introduction Chapter 1 Between Formal and Stylistic Diversity – Handeling in the Art of the Late Rembrandtists Handeling: a Historical Account of the Term Formal Diversity Stylistic Diversity Chapter 2 Primacy of the Hand The Thinking Hand ‘Artisan’ by Conviction Handeling as Habitus Chapter 3 Art Materials Paint as Plastic Material Paint as Impasto Relief Natural and Artificial Processes of Materials Chapter 4 Facets of Handling the Paint The Unfinished as a Principle Playing with Accident Contradictory Dynamism Chapter 5 The Iconicity of Action Motion Action Between Empathy and Distance – Exciting Emotions by Corporeal Techniques Chapter 6 Proximity and Distance From the Amorphous to the Manifestation of Form The Relationship between Haptics and Optics The Dissolution of the Opposite Poles of Proximity and Distance Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index of Names