(SOLD): WEX, Marianne. Le langage féminin et masculin du corps : reflet de l’ordre patriarcal. [Des attitudes révélatrices : une rétrospective de nos jours à l’antiquité à travers 2000 documents photographiques.]

(Brussels): Éditions Academia, 1993. First French edition. Softcover. 24 × 29 cm. 354 pages. Illustrated throughout. A landmark of feminist photography and conceptual art. Between 1972 and 1977 Wex made some 5,000 photographs of people in the streets of Hamburg and sorted them into categories, setting women and men side by side by the position of the arms, legs, feet, knees, elbows, hands, shoulders and head. She supplemented them with rephotographed material from advertising, film and the press, and with comparative examples from antiquity and the Middle Ages, to test whether these postures were innate or learned. The result, first shown as more than 200 panels in the late 1970s, argues that “natural” gesture is a product of patriarchal conditioning. Wex argues that women habitually take up as little space as possible, with knees together, hands clasped or resting one on another and feet turned inward, a posture the wearing of skirts reinforces. Men take up the maximum space, with knees apart, feet turned outward and elbows extended in an attitude of conquest. The work was largely forgotten until it was rediscovered when Mike Sperlinger showed some of the panels at Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, in 2009, followed by a fuller presentation at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, in 2012. It is now regarded as a pioneering work of feminist art and a standard reference in gender studies. A very good copy in wrappers. Scarce.