Screening Statues Sculpture and Cinema

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

• ISBN13: 9781474410892
• ISBN10: 1474410898
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-10-01
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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

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