The Finger: A Handbook - Rilegato

Trumble, Angus

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0374154988 ISBN 13: 9780374154981

Casa editrice: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2010

Riassunto

FROM THE AUTHOR OF A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SMILE, A COMPLETE INDEX OF THE DIGIT

In this collision between art and science, history and pop culture, the acclaimed art historian Angus Trumble examines the finger from every possible angle. His inquiries into its representation in art take us from Buddhist statues in Kyoto to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, from cave art to Picasso’s Guernica, from Van Dyck’s and Rubens’s winning ways with gloves to the longstanding French taste for tapering digits. But Trumble also asks intriguing questions about the finger in general: How do fingers work, and why do most of us have five on each hand? Why do we bite our nails?

This witty, odd, and fascinating book is filled with diverse anecdotes about the silent language of gesture, the game of love, the spinning of balls, superstitions relating to the severed fingers of thieves, and systems of computation that were used on wharves and in shops, markets, granaries, and warehouses throughout the ancient Roman world. Side by side with historical discussions of rings and gloves and nail polish are meditations on the finger’s essential role in writing, speech, sports, crime, law, sex, worhsip, memory, scratching politely at eighteenth-century French doors (instead of crudely knocking), or merely satisfying an itch—and, of course, in the eponymous show of contempt.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Angus Trumble is the youngest of four brothers and was born and raised in Victoria, Australia. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, and of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where he was a Fulbright Scholar in 1994–95. From 1996 to 2001 he was Curator of European Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, and since 2003 has been Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

Product Description:

In this collision between art and science, history and pop culture, acclaimed art historian Trumble presents this witty, odd, and fascinating book that is filled with diverse anecdotes on the finger's essential role in writing, sports, crime, and, of course, the eponymous show of contempt.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0374154988
• ISBN 13: 9780374154981
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 300