A tool, a symbol, a weapon just three of the many possible focuses or reasons that hands define art.
The following is extracted from a Google search: Hands are an organ for performance, serves as eyes for the blind, the mute talk with them and the deaf hear with them. They are a symbol of salutation, supplication and condemnation. The hand has played a part in the creative life of every known society.
When I consider hands in art I think of them as the ultimate artists tool. The hand holds the brush or pencil to make the marks on the support to convey the artists vision. Hands can also be used directly to apply material, smearing, rubbing, scratching etc. There are alternatives such as the mouth or the foot but but these lack the dexterity of the hand. I have long supported the Mouth and Foot painting artists charity and am always surprised by quality of the paintings. However the mouth or foot is used due to circumstance rather than preference.
Shirin Neshat, an Iranian visual artist who works primarily in film, video and photography. Her work centres on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public life and private life, antiquity and modernity and bridging the space between these subjects. She often uses test in her work, writing across photographs of faces, hands and feet. These images are used to get across messages, particularly pertaining to feminine suppression in Iran. They create awareness of the repression facing Muslim women and their pursuit of freedom.
Douglas Gordon’s installation ‘The divided self I and A divided self II, 1996 on display at Tate Scotland is a two channel video installation. I read it as a battle between the two halves of the self. An expression of the internal dialogue that we have within ourselves. This manifests itself in the contradiction of the image of ourselves that we present to the world, sane, ordered and the private identity that we keep hidden from view. All the contradictions that we withhold from the mirror view of ourselves and our place in the world.
Cindy Sherman, works exclusively in photographic self-portraits depicting herself in many different contexts and imagined characters. Whilst initially interesting I found that I quickly became bored with the photographs.
Mark Taylor 'Studio Practice' 