gesture
"For more things affect our eyes than our ears."
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Essay on the Origin of Languages”
Gesture, or a visual communication using physical
material, can be an autonomous language, a supplement to various other languages
or a medium. The word "gesture" derives from the Latin words gestura,
meaning "bearing," "way of carrying" or "mode of action," and gerere,
the infinitive form, which means "to carry, to behave, to take on oneself,
to take charge of, to perform or to accomplish." [1] According
to The Oxford English Dictionary , gesture, as a noun, signifies "the
manner of carrying the body," "grace of manner," "the employment of bodily
movement," "position," "posture" or "attitude" and as a verb, "to order
the attitudes of movements of (the body, oneself)." [2]
Gestures using the body are
reflexive. One gestures to the other but one uses the self or carries
the self to produce the gesture. Yet gestures can be produced with
other materials besides the human body and objects can
gesture without human agency. The term gesture also often signifies
non-physical movements such as expressions in sounds or thoughts.
The physical gesture could be a variety of different actions;
it may be composed of a small wave of the hand, large movements incorporating
the entire body or simply be a state of being, a posture or a stance. Although
gesture is generally a nonverbal form of communication, it is often incorporated
with speech or other media of expression, such as music or song. Gestures
in dance, martial arts, sports, ceremonial occasions, religious events,
dramatic arts, the symphony and even at the stock market are part of complex
systems of regulated movements. Yet such habitual activities as eating,
drinking, working and greeting one another can be considered gestures too.
The word "gesture" does not refer to subconscious or involuntary actions
like expressions or mannerisms. Gestures are generally regarded as
intentional movements. [3] A gesture need not
be a physical manifestation of the human body but can be exhibited in other
media as well.
It is believed that gesture is the oldest form of language and that it
evolved before or perhaps simultaneously with speech. Studies of the movements
and gestures of primates, such as chimpanzees, indicate a complex use of gesture
for communication. Philip Lieberman theorizes that spoken language in
humans developed from these non-verbal communications that are seen today in
primates. [4] Use of gesture today derives from
man's pre-linguistic state. [5]
One group of anthropologists asks, "If language began as gesture, why did
it not stay that way?" and then answers the question by stating that gesture remains in
language. [6] Speech itself can be
regarded as a form of gesture and the spoken word and the gesture are so tightly
interwoven that very often they cannot be isolated. In ancient times, gesture
was a fundamental aspect of speech. In Cicero's De Oratore and
Quintilian Institutiones Oratoriae the use of gesture is described
as one of the most important elements of convincing rhetoric. Richard
Brilliant's study of the art of the Roman Empire demonstrates how gesture was
conceived of as a sign of education, character and social standing of the individual. [7]
For centuries treatises and manuals have been written to instruct man on
how to implement gestures effectively as a form of language. The Book
of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione is one such example because its
aim was to teach the sixteenth-century European courtier how to use sprezzatura or
an air of grace and ease in all of his actions. In the seventeenth-century
several treatises on gesture were published such as, John Bulwer's Chirologia,
or the Natural Language of the Hand whereunto is added Chironomia, or the Art
of Manual Rhetoric (1620). This English physician explained that
gesture is the only speech "natural" and "universal" to man. [8]
The many variations of "sign language" that have developed over the past centuries
incorporate gesture alone in its "natural" form without
the spoken word to form an elaborate visual language that enables deaf persons
to communicate face to face. Gestures are necessary, especially in the
form of deixis, to communicate when traveling to other countries where the
spoken language is unknown. Travel books, gestural phrase books, as well as
films and television aid in demonstrating how to speak with one's hands and
bodies around the world and at the same time illustrate the multicultural nature
of gesture. [9]
Gestures speak or express independently within religion and dance as well. For
example, genuflexion is a ritualized gesture of prayer, worship and humility
in Catholicism and is performed without speech or any other form of language. Similarly,
the various positions of the body practiced in yoga are spiritual communications
that are meant to provoke sensation and spiritual harmony. In dance, each
movement can communicate literally (as in sign language) or symbolically some
certain idea or emotion. Dance can be performed without other media. Physical
gestures in dance, like those in tap dance, produce sound as well. Labanotation
or dance notation allows choreographers, dancers or anthropologists to record
the somewhat ephemeral movements of the body in dance so that they can be illustrated
and thus remembered in a written script.
Gestures are frozen in space within the fine arts of painting, sculpture, photography and architecture. Art
historian Moshe Barash explains that gesture in art has not been systematically
studied adequately and that it is difficult to distinguish between gesture
and representation in art. [10] For example,
do the hands of God and Adam in the central scene of Michelangelo's Sistine
ceiling portray gestures or do they act as a representation? The
gestures of God and Adam, in fact, represent the creation of man. This
simple gesture depicted by Michelangelo in the chapel has in turn been
codified into an icon.
Can a work of art gesture itself? Or does the artist
always produce the gesture within the art? Human figures in art can
gesture, yet perhaps even a non-representational work
can gesture as well and can act as an expressive body of its own. A
mobile by Calder gestures through its movement through space. A stationary abstract work,
such as a Rothko painting, gestures to the observer as well for it silently
performs a certain position or state of being. According to
Michael Fried, in order for an object to constitute a work of art, it must
imitate the "efficacy of gesture" or express meaning through
its anthropomorphic qualities. [11] Minimalist
art sought to rid itself of gesture, perhaps an impossible endeavor.
Gestures are temporal. They come and go in time and are often fleeting. While
sometimes a gesture remains in space forever, like in painting, photography
or film, its meaning changes. In the introduction to his text, Studies
in Iconology, Erwin Panofsky shows two possible ways of perceiving an
example of a man greeting another man with the gesture of lifting the hat. One
meaning of this gesture is "elementary" or factual: the man greets the other
man. The other meaning of this gesture is "expressional" or rooted with "psychological
nuances" that can only be understood through an understanding of "the more-than-practical
world of customs and cultural traditions peculiar to a certain civilization." [12] While
Panofsky's example of a greeting appears dated today, his explanation of the
complexity of a certain gesture is unchanged. He uses this example to
demonstrate that the iconology of a work of art is readable in the same way
as a gesture between two people on the street. [13]
In the various media of the arts, color, brushstroke, composition, and style
are gestures as well. They too are elements of visual expression. The
particular material used in the construction of a building can be an example
of a gesture used by the architect. Today the rusticated stone of the
old Chicago watertower expresses its durability and signifies a time in Chicago
before the great fire.
Gesture is also fundamental to the work of the artist. An artist like Vermeer
clearly used miniscule gestures or brushstrokes in order to depict nature on
canvas in great detail. Jackson Pollock, however, made sweeping movements
and painted with his entire body in order to produce his drip paintings. It
is in the white of the canvas or between the paint splatters, that Pollock's
gestures and the gesture of the work itself are made evident.
Perhaps what makes a gesture so powerful is not the gesture itself but the
moment before the gesture or between the gestures. Walter Benjamin explains
that in theater a pause between gestures is essential because spacing the gestures
apart from one another makes them "quotable" or perhaps memorable. [14] These
spaces between the gestures allow the viewer to reflect on what is being seen
and experienced. The anticipation that one feels at the moment before a flag
is raised for a race, the brief second before a kiss or even before Ebert gives
a film a "thumbs up" is more impressive than visualizing the actual gesture
itself.
Yet gesture is not always visible, not always physical. Sound gestures;
for example, the sound of the trumpet rouses the military to service, a certain
phrase in the music can be a gesture to commence a dance and a car horn is
certainly an audible gesture. Other non-visual gestures include ideas
that manifest themselves or become known. The thought of giving a gift
to someone could be regarded as a "nice gesture." [15]
It is as if the gesture transcends the written word for it is an action that
occurs at a specific time and space. Another aspect that truly differentiates
gesture from other languages or media is that is sensorial. It is not
only the viewer of the gesture that receives the message or experiences a new
idea or sensation but the gesturer herself as well. How does the person
making the gesture feel? It is not only an expression of the mind like that
in spoken or written language (although we do make gestures with the mouth
or with the hand in those instances) but an expression of the body and perhaps
the soul. Barash evokes Leon Battista Alberti's words in On Painting (1435)
to demonstrate that gestures are perceived as emotional signifiers: "These
movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body. [16] Gesture
within its multiple forms is the most primal and yet one of the most complex
media for communicating ideas and emotions to others and the self.
Lia Markey
Winter 2002