Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The articulated human figure made of wax or wood has been a common tool in artistic practice since the 16th century. Its mobile limbs enable the artist to study anatomical proportion, fix a pose at will, and perfect the depiction of drapery and clothing. Over the course of the 19th century, the mannequin gradually emerged from the studio to become the artist's subject, at first humorously, then in more complicated ways, playing on the unnerving psychological presence of a figure that was realistic, yet unreal-lifelike, yet lifeless.

Silent Partners locates the artist's mannequin within the context of an expanding universe of effigies, avatars, dolls, and shop window dummies. Generously illustrated, this book features works by such artists as Poussin, Gainsborough, Degas, Courbet, Cézanne, Kokoschka, Dalí, Man Ray, and others; the astute, perceptive text examines their range of responses to the uncanny and highly suggestive potential of the mannequin.

Published in association with the Fitzwilliam Museum

Exhibition Schedule:

Musée Bourdelle, Paris
(03/15/15-05/15/15)

Fitzwilliam Museum
(10/14/14-01/15/15)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Easily overlooked, lay figures ranging from abstract articulated forms to highly realistic fashion mannequins served as important props in artists' studios. Live models and photographs replaced mannequins in the 19th century; early-20th-century surrealists promoted them as fetishistic objects. Though the latter phenomenon has received much attention, Munro (Univ. of Cambridge, UK), provides a diversified account that includes such related objects as devotional sculptures, funeral effigies, fashion dolls, and automatons. The study takes into consideration the visual characteristics of the lay figures and ways they were procured and used. Artists included are well known (Edgar Degas, Gustave Courbet, Dora Maar, Hans Bellmer, Giorgio de Chirico, Oskar Kokoschka, and Salvador Dalí) and little known (Alan Beeton, José María Sert, and Edward Linley Sambourne). In a chapter on Pygmalionism, Munro examines work by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Edward Burne-Jones, Jéan-Léon Gérôme, and Henry Darger. The archives of Charles Roberson (a mannequin distributor) and caricatures published in the illustrated journals Punch and Le Charivari provide important contexts, as does a wide range of literature (Mary Shelley, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Émile Zola, E.T.A. Hoffmann, George Méliès, Edmond Audran, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Alfred Binet, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing). Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, graduate students, and research faculty. --Elizabeth K. Mix, Butler University