Abstract Spontaneity: On Brushstrokes as Gestures

Abstract

An old improvisational semiotic practice is gesturing by hand. Hand gestures have often been regarded as spontaneous embodiments of psychic processes, and also as a primal and universal mode of human expression. The view not only characterizes some psychological and lay theories, but also schools of modern art, most explicitly Abstract Expressionism. This article is a study of hand gestures by an art historian discussing two Abstract Expressionist painters. It shows how an ideology of gestures and brushstrokes as spontaneous emotion-driven expressions is articulated by the expert’s hand gestures, but also shown to be a calculated effect of the images, a figuration. Following the analysis of the videotaped episode, the construal of gesture as primal and emotional is shown to match conservative ideologies seeking to suppress the alleged wildness of gesture. A review of the art-historian’s own improvisational, kinesthesia-driven gesture practices concludes the article.