Susanne M. Winterling

Some European countries are now considering proposals to cut cursive handwriting from public-school curricula. A millennia-old cultural technology is fated to vanish; citizens of the future will write using only computer keyboards and screens. Handwriting (at its most fundamental, the marking of a roughened or absorbent ground) and the fine motor skills it requires are being replaced by swiping, dragging, clicking, and tapping—gestures that encounter no physical resistance, and which register on a smooth luminescent surface.

These developments and their repercussions are the subject of

print November 2014

Gianfranco Baruchello

It all starts with ABC. Between 1959 and 1962, Gianfranco Baruchello painted Primo alfabeto (First Alphabet), covering the canvas with a set of pictorial icons of his own invention, hieroglyphs inspired by sources such as books and window casements. Together with several assemblages from the same period, including Quelli che verrano A (Those Who Will Come A), 1959, the painting opened “Certain Ideas,” the comprehensive retrospective of Baruchello’s oeuvre curated by Deichtorhallen’s director, Dirk Luckow. The choice was an apt one, since these early works already feature two of the most salient