LONDON.- Touch is our first sense. Through touch we make art, stake a claim to what we own and those we love, express our faith, our belief, our anger. Touch is how we leave our mark and find our place in the world; touch is how we connect. Drawing on works of art spanning 4,000 years and from across the globe, The Human Touch is a journey through the anatomical workings of touch, its creative force, and its emotional power.

Taking as its starting point the idea that touch is our first and deepest sense, The Human Touch unearths the symbolism of touch in faith traditions from around the world, and reveals the marks of touch, both reverential and violent, on art and material culture from four millennia of human history. Peopled with images of the human hand denoting creativity, resistance, and empowerment, it invites us to stop taking touch for granted and to reconnect with the tactile foundations of our lives. How does touch work? What can it produce? What are its meanings, from the very personal to the political?

In a series of beautifully illustrated essays, the authors explore anatomy and skin; the relationship between the brain, hand, and creativity; touch, desire and possession; ideological touch; reverence and iconoclasm. The book includes reflections on touch by poet Raymond Antrobus and artist Carmen Mariscal, and a short essay on the image of the hand in politics and Black history by artist Richard Rawlins. Objects range from anonymous ancient Egyptian limestone sculpture to medieval manuscripts and panel paintings, to devotional and spiritual objects from across the world, to love tokens and fede rings. Drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture by Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Carracci, Hogarth, Turner, Rodin, Degas, and Kollwitz are explored, along with work by contemporary artists Judy Chicago, Frank Auerbach, Richard Long, the Chapman Brothers, and Richard Rawlins.

The events of 2020 have made us newly alive to both the value and the dangers of touch, and many of the one hundred and fi fty or so objects in the show and this accompanying catalogue have become doubly powerful in the context of the pandemic. This exploration of our most fundamental sense is urgent, timely and resonant.