“Leaving an imprint is so potent a gesture that in black magic one of the ways to cast a fatal spell on someone is to wipe out an imprint left by a part of his body. Such imprints are an immediate, unmediated sign of existence, a powerful link with the earth. The imprint left by the body is an object of wonder, curiosity and emotion. At one and the same time it is a mark of a living being, of a form and of an inanimate object; it constitutes a more or less decipherable sign.
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Bodies cast shadows, leave imprints. And in various ways these imprints and shadows have been a constant source of fascination to artists. Prehistoric Man left prints of his paint-covered hand on the walls of a cave. An elemental, magic gesture ...”

Adalgisa Lugli: Imprints of Mind and Body. The Continuity and Change of the Ancient in the Modern. Aus: ‘Identity and Alterity. Figures of the Body 1895/1995’. La Biennale di Venezia - Marsilio Editori s.p.a., Venedig 1995.