Avec les mains : la main dans l'art contemporain comme figure Trans et allégorie possible de la plasticité

Details

Supervisors

Maud Hagelstein

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master de spécialisation en études de genre

Abstract

enBeginning with the question, "Why don't works depicting hands constitute a genre in their own right, in the same way that works depicting flowers are still lifes and works depicting faces are portraits?", this work unfolds a reflection based on the homonymy gender / gender, the term defining both 'social sex' and artistic genres. If these works are not a predefined historical genre, how can they make one? We'll focus on three artworks in particular: Pauline Curnier Jardin's diorama Le mystère de la création sans les mains, une nativité (2012), David de Tscharner's video Faces (2014), and Ketty la Rocca's photograph from the Craniologie series (1973). These works with hands are requested to reply, bear witness, and speak what they have to say regarding the law of gender as coined by Derrida . These pieces help in understanding the gender logic that underpins the evolution of the representation of hands in art from the classical period to the present day, when this figure is especially popular. The hand became a topic in its own right with the gradual move from the Beaux-Arts system to that of the plastic arts. This change, according to Jacques Rancière, can be regarded as both a social and an aesthetic one. Each of these three artworks demonstrate that this transition is a story of transformations and metamorphoses: it is a progression anchored by a paradigm change from identity to practice. They demonstrate how a way of thinking about plasticity recognizes this change from the order of being to the order of acting and offers it as a new epistemological concept. These contemporary works of art demonstrate a potential new figuration of the hand, enabling us to recognize the hand as a Trans figure and perhaps an allegory of plasticity.