Living Pictures, Missing Persons: Mannequins, Museums, and Modernity / Edition 1

by Mark B. Sandberg

Overview

In the late nineteenth century, Scandinavian urban dwellers developed a passion for a new, utterly modern sort of visual spectacle: objects and effigies brought to life in astonishingly detailed, realistic scenes. The period 1880-1910 was the popular high point of mannequin display in Europe. Living Pictures, Missing Persons explores this phenomenon as it unfolded with the rise of wax museums and folk museums in the largest cities of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Mark Sandberg asks: Why did modernity generate a cultural fascination with the idea of effigy? He shows that the idea of effigy is also a portal to understanding other aspects of visual entertainment in that period, including the widespread interest in illusionistic scenes and tableaux, in the "portability" of sights, spaces, and entire milieus.


Sandberg investigates this transformation of visual culture outside the usual test cases of the largest European metropolises. He argues that Scandinavian spectators desired an unusual degree of authenticity—a cultural preference for naturalism that made its way beyond theater to popular forms of museum display. The Scandinavian wax museums and folk-ethnographic displays of the era helped pre-cinematic spectators work out the social implications of both voyeuristic and immersive display techniques. This careful study thus anticipates some of the central paradoxes of twentieth-century visual culture—but in a time when the mannequin and the physical relic reigned supreme, and in a place where the contrast between tradition and modernity was a high-stakes game.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691050744
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mark B. Sandberg is Associate Professor of Scandinavian and Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii

CHAPTER ONE: The Idea of Effigy 1

CHAPTER TWO: Upstairs, Downstairs at the Wax Museum 18

A Scandinavian Panoptikon 26

Ape in the Human 29

CHAPTER THREE: The Wax Effigy as Recording Technology 37

Annihilation of Space and Time 40

Effigy as Index 47

Persuasive Relics 59

CHAPTER FOUR: Figure and Tableau 69

Showing Stories 71

The Living Tableau 82

Toeing the Line 95

Entrapment Scenarios 108

CHAPTER FIVE: Panoptikon, Metropolis, and the Urban Uncanny 117

Small Big Cities 119

Urbanity and Orientalism 126

The City in the Mirror 135

CHAPTER SIX: Vanishing Culture 145

Cultural Juxtaposition 153

Tableaux for Tourists 161

Cradle or Grave? 168

CHAPTER SEVEN: Dead Bones Rise 178

Homeless Objects 182

Props 191

CHAPTER EIGHT: Insiders 202

Cohabitation 208

Traces 216

Home, Again 224

CHAPTER NINE: Farmers and Flaneurs 232

Cultural-Historical Intoxication 238

Goldi-Locks 245

Rubes and Gypsies 250

Greater Skansen 255

CHAPTER TEN: Material Mobility 261

NOTES 275

What People are Saying About This

Anthony Vidler

This book stands on its own as the first comprehensive institutional study of wax and folk museums in any national context, and one that, because of the exhaustive nature of the research and the theoretical awareness of the author, succeeds in presenting their multiple forms and roles in ways that go beyond many conventional studies of the era's museums and spectacles.
— Anthony Vidler, University of California, Los Angeles

From the Publisher

"Living Pictures, Missing Persons is a pioneering work. It gives the first thorough description of the early history of wax museums and folk museums in Scandinavia and it is at the same time a highly interesting analysis of different forms of museum display in light of theories on spectatorship. It is well written, often elegantly combining vivid anecdotal details with theoretical reflection."—Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen

"This book stands on its own as the first comprehensive institutional study of wax and folk museums in any national context, and one that, because of the exhaustive nature of the research and the theoretical awareness of the author, succeeds in presenting their multiple forms and roles in ways that go beyond many conventional studies of the era's museums and spectacles."—Anthony Vidler, University of California, Los Angeles

Martin Zerlang

Living Pictures, Missing Persons is a pioneering work. It gives the first thorough description of the early history of wax museums and folk museums in Scandinavia and it is at the same time a highly interesting analysis of different forms of museum display in light of theories on spectatorship. It is well written, often elegantly combining vivid anecdotal details with theoretical reflection.
— Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen

Editorial Reviews

"Living Pictures, Missing Persons is a pioneering work. It gives the first thorough description of the early history of wax museums and folk museums in Scandinavia and it is at the same time a highly interesting analysis of different forms of museum display in light of theories on spectatorship. It is well written, often elegantly combining vivid anecdotal details with theoretical reflection."—Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen

From the Publisher