{"id":12231,"date":"2012-10-24T02:34:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T01:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=12231"},"modified":"2025-09-22T20:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:55:12","slug":"gloves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/10\/24\/gloves\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"klingerglove.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Glove:\u00a0<\/em>Anxieties <\/em>(1881) by Max Klinger.<\/p>\n

Although the Glove<\/em>‘s scenario was given its due Germanic explication by contemporary critics, it defies rational analysis. The last picture, which was seen as a kind of happy ending to the glove’s peregrinations, is particularly ambiguous and leaves the whole meaning of the series in doubt. The story is a parable of loss based on a trivial lost article, like the lost keys in Bluebeard<\/em> and in Alice<\/em>, like Desdemona’s missing handkerchief, or like the philosopher’s spectacles in Klinger’s own Fantasy on Brahms<\/em>, which have slid out of their proprietor’s reach just as he was nearing the summit of a kind of Matterhorn. There are overtones of erotic symbolism and fetishism in the glove and the phalloid monster who abducts it, heightened for a modern viewer by the Krafft-Ebing period costumes and d\u00e9cors (the engravings appeared in 1881, and the drawings were apparently finished in 1878).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John Ashbery<\/a> describing Max Klinger’s extraordinary series of etchings A Glove<\/em> (aka Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove<\/em>) which in their inexplicable narrative of fetishist obsession anticipate Surrealism. See the entire sequence here<\/a> or here<\/a>. For A Glove<\/em> in print there’s The Graphic Works of Max Klinger<\/em><\/a> from Dover Publications.<\/p>\n

\"dechirico.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Song of Love (1914) by Giorgio de Chirico.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ashbery begins by discussing Giorgio de Chirico’s enthusiasm for Klinger’s work, a passion and influence that provides one of the many connections between the Symbolists and the Surrealists. This “metaphysical” painting looks back to Klinger and forward to Magritte.<\/p>\n

\"michalsglove.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Pleasures of the Glove, 3 (1974) by Duane Michals.<\/em><\/p>\n

The enigmatic encounter of \u2018The pleasures of the glove’ follows the lead character as he fantasises about a pair of gloves on the hands of a mannequin in a shopfront window. The perverse pleasure of desiring the gloves but not acquiring them leads him on a surreal adventure of first imagining his own glove as a queer furry tunnel that swallows his hand to the fantasy of stroking the naked body of a woman he sees on the bus with her own glove. (more<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A more contemporary take on the same idea, albeit without the intercession of a pterodactyl-like thief. If Klinger is pre-Surrealism then this is the post- version; Michals photographed Ren\u00e9 Magritte<\/a>, and many of his other works run in a distinctly Surreal direction<\/a>. (Thanks to Anne Billson<\/a> for the tip!)<\/p>\n

\"bartagloves.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Vanished World of Gloves<\/em> (1982) by Czech animator Ji\u0159\u00ed Barta features sex, Surrealism and a lot more besides, all in the space of 16 minutes. A can of film is unearthed which contains a series of short episodes pastiching different cinematic styles: Chaplinesque slapstick, swashbuckling romance, Bu\u00f1uel Surrealism, a war film, a Fellini orgy and a science fiction apocalypse. All the parts are played by gloves, of course, and if you didn’t see the credits you might take this at first for a Svankmajer short.<\/p>\n

The Vanished World of Gloves<\/em>: part one<\/a> | part two<\/a><\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> I knew I’d forgotten something… Added de Chirico’s The Song of Love<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 More Golems<\/a>
\n\u2022 Max Klinger\u2019s New Salom\u00e9<\/a>
\n\u2022 Barta\u2019s Golem<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Glove:\u00a0Anxieties (1881) by Max Klinger. Although the Glove‘s scenario was given its due Germanic explication by contemporary critics, it defies rational analysis. The last picture, which was seen as a kind of happy ending to the glove’s peregrinations, is particularly ambiguous and leaves the whole meaning of the series in doubt. The story is … Continue reading “Gloves”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,2,30,7,44,12,18,45],"tags":[4179,3889,693,402,3984,4191,1069,115],"class_list":["post-12231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-art","category-black-white","category-film","category-painting","category-photography","category-surrealism","category-symbolists","tag-anne-billson","tag-duane-michals","tag-giorgio-de-chirico","tag-golem","tag-jiri-barta","tag-john-ashbery","tag-max-klinger","tag-magritte"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sq7rV-gloves","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}