The Art of Gesture : Classical and Renaissance Expressions

Benjamin, Andrew

Edinburgh University Press（2026/04発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 256 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781399529631

Full Description

Andrew Benjamin approaches the relationship between philosophy and art history through the concept of gesture. Critically engaging with Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg and Giorgio Agamben, by focusing on gesture he offers a novel philosophical intervention into the classical problem of 'meaning' in art, as well as addressing the new perspectives brought by political theology into art theory.

Benjamin uses gesture to function as the continual point of orientation, allowing works of art and their detail to be central. Original interpretations of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Rosso Fiorentino and Piero dell Francesca show how Christian political theology has an operative presence within the works of art examined. A key theme running through the book is the question of time in the work of art, alongside the question of how art history, and the representation of history in art, are to be understood philosophically.

Contents

Introduction: Gesture as Informed Form

Part 1. Towards the Object
Chapter 1) The Object of Expression
Chapter 2) The Emergence of the Object: Kant on Genius

Part 2. Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin
Chapter 3) The Doubling of Gesture: Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin
Chapter 4) Gesture and Expression: Limiting Lament's Repetition: Walter Benjamin and Sophocles' Electra
Chapter 5) Empathy and Gesture: Warburg in La cappella Sassetti.

Part 3. The Art of Christian Political Theology
Chapter 6) Rosso Fiorentino's 'Dead' Christs.
Chapter 7) Piero della Francesca's Resurrection.

Conclusion