Idiosyncratic Swiss-born artist Hans
Witschi creates a metaphor for human
birth and social development in "The
Hand Book." Having shifted, during a
career spanning nearly three decades,
from purely representational and
figurative work (his early canvases
featured ruthlessly direct nude self-
portraits of Witschi, who has been
severely crippled since birth) to
metaphorical treatments of artists
and their studios (canvas "studio-visits"
as a way of revisiting the "memory of
the hand," or, as Witschi says, "the fact
that, as one paints, one is constantly
aware that each stroke of the brush
contains the memory of another artist,
and as we complete a painting, stroke
by stroke, we are effectively reliving the
whole history of art") to a book-length
photographic treatment of the hand
itself in mainstream media as another
form of birth and growth (the hand
isolated eventually gives way to the
"not-touched touch," or human
interaction, and finally, to the mass
communal gesture, or social man).