Thinking Bodies - Shaping Hands

Handeling in Art and Theory of the Late Rembrandtists
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-35384-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 15, 356 Seiten, Format (B × H): 175 mm x 251 mm, Gewicht: 1066 g

Reihe: Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hadjinicolaou, Yannis

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: Barock, Klassizismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Foreword

Introduction

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

2 Primacy of the Hand

The Thinking Hand

‘Artisan’ by Conviction

Handeling as Habitus

3 Art Materials

Paint as Plastic Material

Paint as Impasto Relief

Natural and Artificial Processes of Materials

4 Facets of Handling the Paint

The Unfinished as a Principle

Playing with Accident

Contradictory Dynamism

5 The Iconicity of Action

Motion

Action

Between Empathy and Distance – Exciting Emotions by Corporeal Techniques

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

Über Autor(innen)

Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Ph.D. (2014), Freie Universität Berlin, is a research associate at the international research project "Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg´s Legacy and the Future of Iconology", Warburg Haus (Institute of Art History, University of Hamburg). He has published three edited volumes and articles on art and art theory of the early modern period, the political iconography of falconry and the theory and history of art history as well as synagonism in the arts.