I went to hear Angus Trumble talk about his recent book that he wrote, "The Finger." This is his second book, the first book he wrote was "A Brief History of the Smile." I liked Angus, he was a funny guy. He is from Australia and had an awesome Australian accent. This lecture was about how he went about writing the book. He wanted to look at different hands and how they appear in art, and the trends he has found.
In chapter one he talks about the first prehistoric hands, hands were one of the first pieces of artwork. Caveman use to put their hands up against the rocks and blow paint around it making a silhouette of a handprint. In chapter two he looks at hands in the renaissance era.
He noticed that all renaissance hands are plump. He then goes on to say that portraits of hispanic people tend to have skinny and long fingers. Chapter two goes more into the anatomy of the hand. He also taps into the peace sign and the Romans. The last thing he talks about are gloves and nail polish. He referred to nail polish has nail varnish. Gloves and nail polish tend to show a persons status. When you have gloves or nail polish on, you are of higher status.
His book was a mixture of art history, the anatomy of the finger, and analysis of the finger. The lecture was interesting and I liked exploring all trends he found, and all of his findings were true about hands in art history. I personally was not into the subject matter that much because talking about hands got a little boring. I wished we got to look at more examples of artwork. He only showed a few images but overall i enjoyed it.
