Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema

by Steven Jacobs, Susan Felleman, Vito Adriaensens, Lisa Colpaert

Overview

Whereas sculpture is an artistic practice that involves not only static but also material, three-dimensional, and durable objects, the cinema produces kinetic, immaterial, two-dimensional, and fleeting images. However, the history of cinema amply illustrates the attraction of these opposites: statues coming to life in early cinema and disturbing the peace in Surrealist and trance films; the optical and haptic exploration of sculptural volumes in art documentaries and artists' films; the lure of the wax museums in horror films; the statuary metaphors of post-war modernist cinema; the mythological living statues of the peplum genre; and contemporary art practices in which film is used as sculptural medium.

Dealing with a wide range of magical, mystical, cultural, historical, formal, and phenomenological interactions between film and sculpture, this book examines key sculptural motifs in film and cinematic sculpture in eight chapters and an extensive reference gallery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474410892
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2017
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steven Jacobs teaches at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp.

Susan Felleman is Professor of Art History and Film and Media Studies at the University of South Carolina.

Vito Adriaensens is a visiting scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University's Film Department with a Fellowship from the Flemish Research Council and the European Union's Horizon 2020 Project at the University of Antwerp.

Lisa Colpaert is a fashion designer and a film historian. She works as a curator for Cinea at the Royal Belgian Film Archive and is undertaking a practice-based PhD at the London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Marble Camera, Steven Jacobs

PART I: ESSAYS
1. The Sculptor's Dream: Living Statues in Early Cinema, Vito Adriaensens and Steven Jacobs
2. The Mystery... The Blood...the Age of Gold: Sculpture in Surrealist and Surreal Cinema, Susan Felleman
3. Carving Cameras on Thorvaldsen and Rodin: Mid-Twentieth-Century Documentaries on Sculpture, Steven Jacobs
4. Mysteries of the Wax Museum: Anatomy of an Ovidian Cinema, Vito Adriaensens
5. The Night of the Human Body: Statues and Fantasy in Post-War American Cinema, Susan Felleman
6. From Pompei to Marienbad: Classical Sculpture in Post-War European Modernist Cinema, Steven Jacobs and Lisa Colpaert
7. Of Swords, Sandals, and Statues: The Myth of the Living Statue from Hephaistos to the Silver Screen, Vito Adriaensens
8. Coda: Returning the Favor (A Short History of Film Becoming Sculpture), Susan Felleman

PART II: SCULPTURE GALLERY
Vito Adriaensens and Lisa Colpaert

Bibliography
About the Authors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Professor Brigitte Peucker

Film, the art of movement, approaches the statue as its other. As this multi-author volume shows, if film represents sculpture in conjunction with dance, it can also petrify actors. And while film can evince sculpture’s tactility, sculpture has had recourse to the filmstrip as its material. Not surprisingly, Pygmalion finds a central place in this volume and tableau vivant does, as well. Historical and informative, yet interpretive and an engaging read, these essays with their gallery of images provide a trove of material to be explored.

Editorial Reviews

"[Screening Statues] guarantees the reader access to a real textbook on sculpture and film, appealing to art lovers and film fans alike. This is a book that has long been due in that it fills a major gap in the field of statuary in film." — Aniki, Fátima Chinita

"Comprising a wealth of citations, investigative essays, conceptual and corporeal discussions, as well as the prolific supplemental reference gallery in part II, 'Screening Statues' is a venerable text in which to further explore the confluence of two intermedial forms, indebted to and entrenched within one another." — Matthew Johnson, Film Matters

"Screening Statues marks an important contribution to the study of sculpture in film, not only as a record of sculpture's presence in film but also as a critical approach to the tensions and complexities that arise in film between human actors and their sculptural counterparts." — Jessica Schouela, Sculpture Journal

From the Publisher

Screening Statues marks an important contribution to the study of sculpture in film, not only as a record of sculpture’s presence in film but also as a critical approach to the tensions and complexities that arise in film between human actors and their sculptural counterparts.

Sculpture Journal - Jessica Schouela

[Screening Statues] guarantees the reader access to a real textbook on sculpture and film, appealing to art lovers and film fans alike. This is a book that has long been due in that it fills a major gap in the field of statuary in film.'

Aniki - Fátima Chinita

'[Screening Statues] guarantees the reader access to a real textbook on sculpture and film, appealing to art lovers and film fans alike. This is a book that has long been due in that it fills a major gap in the field of statuary in film.'

Aniki - Fátima Chinita

Film, the art of movement, approaches the statue as its other. As this multi-author volume shows, if film represents sculpture in conjunction with dance, it can also petrify actors. And while film can evince sculpture’s tactility, sculpture has had recourse to the filmstrip as its material. Not surprisingly, Pygmalion finds a central place in this volume and tableau vivant does, as well. Historical and informative, yet interpretive and an engaging read, these essays with their gallery of images provide a trove of material to be explored.

Professor Brigitte Peucker

Comprising a wealth of citations, investigative essays, conceptual and corporeal discussions, as well as the prolific supplemental reference gallery in part II, Screening Statues is a venerable text in which to further explore the confluence of two intermedial forms, indebted to and entrenched within one another.'

Film Matters - Matthew Johnson