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The notion of “the artist’s hand,” in which the individual artistic approach to markmaking, composition, or concept is evident, is a staple of Western art historical analysis popularized from the early Renaissance onwards. In this X-ray photograph, Sandman depicts her own hands to invite us to complicate this notion of a single artist. Here, she encourages us to see that while her artistic vision is central to this work, to create it she needed someone else to take the photograph while her hands are framed. Her intention was to celebrate how “shared and individual characteristics point to our commonality and our uniqueness.”
Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.
#26 (hand x-rays)
Jo Sandman (American, born in 1931)
1998–1999
Medium/Technique
Photograph, diazo print
Dimensions
Sheet: 34.6 × 42.2 cm (13 5/8 × 16 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the artist
Accession Number2019.2241
CollectionsContemporary Art, Americas, Photography
ClassificationsPhotographs
The notion of “the artist’s hand,” in which the individual artistic approach to markmaking, composition, or concept is evident, is a staple of Western art historical analysis popularized from the early Renaissance onwards. In this X-ray photograph, Sandman depicts her own hands to invite us to complicate this notion of a single artist. Here, she encourages us to see that while her artistic vision is central to this work, to create it she needed someone else to take the photograph while her hands are framed. Her intention was to celebrate how “shared and individual characteristics point to our commonality and our uniqueness.”
Provenance2019, gift of Jo Sandman, Lexington, MA to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 11, 2019)