The Art of Gesture: Classical and Renaissance Expressions

Andrew Benjamin approaches the relationship between philosophy and art history through the concept of gesture. Critically engaging with Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg and Giorgio Agamben, by focusing on gesture he offers a novel philosophical intervention into the classical problem of ‘meaning’ in art, as well as addressing the new perspectives brought by political theology into art theory.

Benjamin uses gesture to function as the continual point of orientation, allowing works of art and their...