Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema

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

Overview

Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema is the first book to focus on the relationship between sculpture and the silver screen. It covers a broad range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media, from early film’s eroticized tableaux vivants to enigmatic sculptures in modernist cinema. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. The book examines key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through a series of case studies and through an extensive reference gallery of 150 different films. Considering the work of directors like Georges Méliès, Jean Cocteau and Alain Resnais, as well as films like House of Wax, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, this is an innovative exploration of two different media, their artistic traditions and their respective theoretical paradigms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474431705
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steven Jacobs teaches film history and film theory at Ghent Universityand 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 scholar and filmmaker. He is currently Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

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

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

"[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, F tima 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