flect on the crisis of modern subjectivity.Meanwhile, in countless cigarette ads,
well-groomed women’shandsbecame emblems of the new culture of mass diver-
sion. The popular pseudoscience of chiromancypromised accesstothe soul of
modernman through the readingofpalms. The practice of fingerprinting in mod-
ern criminologyusedsimilar assumptionsabout the readability of the bodyfor
the disciplinary regimes of the modern penal code.¹⁴Meanwhile, in modern fac-
tories and industries,the problemwith hands–that is, the need to control and
ultimatelyreplace them–was to be addressed throughradical innovations in
the formsofscientificmanagement known asTaylorism and themodes of indus-
trial production associatedwith Fordism.
Trainedinadvertising and graphic design, Heartfield was familiar with the
advancedmethods and techniques that,inearlytwentieth-centuryvisual cul-
ture, made marketingand propagandaalmost coextensive terms.Inturning in-
dividual hands into symbols of collective strength,herelied heavilyonmodern
typographytotransformavaguesense of indignation into moretargeted expres-
sions of class hatred, beginningwith his graphicapproach to captions and slo-
Fig. 17.6John Heartfield,Rotfront logo,cover
of Der roteStern11 (May 1928), Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek Leipzig.Copyright 2017
The HeartfieldCommunity of Heirs/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), NewYork/VGBild-Kunst
Bonn.It might be productive to consider the surrealist elements inHeartfield throughacomparison
to another famous hand associated with the communistavant-garde, the hand crawling with
ants inLuis Buñuel’sUn Chien Andalou(1929).
310 Chapter 17