Living Pictures, Missing Persons: Mannequins, Museums, and Modernity - Brossura

Sandberg, Mark B.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691050740 ISBN 13: 9780691050744

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 2002

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

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

Contenuti:

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

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0691050740
• ISBN 13: 9780691050744
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 350