Art of Gesture

Andrew Benjamin is an Honorary Professor in the School of Communication and Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. He has held posts in a number of UK and Australian universities. He started his career at the University of Warwick rising to the position of Professor of Philosophy and until 2022 taught for one semester each year at Kingston University in London where he was associated with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. He is the author of numerous books including Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy (2013) and Of Jews and Animals (2011) both published by Edinburgh University Press.

• Introduction: Gesture as Informed FormPart I: Towards the Object1. The Object of Expression2. The Emergence of the Object: Kant on GeniusPart II: Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin3. The Doubling of Gesture: Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin4. Gesture and Expression: Limiting Lament’s Repetition: Walter Benjamin and Sophocles’ Electra5. Empathy and Gesture: Warburg in La cappella Sassetti.Part III: The Art of Christian Political Theology 6. Rosso Fiorentino’s ‘Dead’ Christs.7. Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection.Conclusion

What if a gesture could not only move or speak but think? From Pierro della Francesca to Aby Warburg, Andrew Benjamin offers a new history of artistic gesture as a — philosophically, theologically and politically -- "informed" form. In The Art of Gesture, Benjamin does not simply forge a highly original and erudite dialogue between philosophy and art history but reveals the work of art as itself a form of philosophy. This remarkable book will be required reading for anyone working in philosophy, theology and history of art.