Title Living pictures, missing persons : mannequins, museums, and modernity / Mark B. Sandberg

Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©2003

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 330 pages) : illustrations Contents Ch. 1. The Idea of Effigy -- Ch. 2. Upstairs, Downstairs at the Wax Museum. A Scandinavian Panoptikon. Ape in the Human -- Ch. 3. The Wax Effigy as Recording Technology. Annihilation of Space and Time. Effigy as Index. Persuasive Relics -- Ch. 4. Figure and Tableau. Showing Stories. The Living Tableau. Toeing the Line. Entrapment Scenarios -- Ch. 5. Panoptikon, Metropolis, and the Urban Uncanny. Small Big Cities. Urbanity and Orientalism. The City in the Mirror -- Ch. 6. Vanishing Culture. Cultural Juxtaposition. Tableaux for Tourists. Cradle or Grave? -- Ch. 7. Dead Bones Rise. Homeless Objects. Props -- Ch. 8. Insiders. Cohabitation. Traces. Home, Again -- Ch. 9. Farmers and Flaneurs. Cultural-Historical Intoxication Summary 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 Analysis A Severed Head Agnosticism Anachronism Anthropomorphism Antique furniture Archive Assassination Autobiography Cataclysm (Dragonlance) Cemetery Chamber of Horrors (Madame Tussauds) City Museum Complexity Crone Cultural history Curator Deal with the Devil Death mask Death Decapitation Decoy effect Degenerative disease Desecration Diorama Dismemberment Distrust Documenta Double consciousness Dreyfus affair Entrapment Ephemerality Exoticism False evidence First Sorrow Folk museum From Time Immemorial Genre painting Grandparent Grave robbery His Family Historical Association Historical trauma Horror film Hyperreality Illustration Impossibility Infidel Jonathan Crary Karen Blixen Leprosy Linda Williams (film scholar) Mail Mannequin Memoir Michael Dummett Michael Fried Mock execution Modernity Morgue Most Secret Museology Museum Mystery of the Wax Museum Neglect Neoromanticism (music) New Thought Newspaper Night of the Living Dead Nightmare in Wax Nordic Museum Obsolescence On Cinema Orientalism P.T. Barnum Paul Leni Personal History Portrait photography Random House Religion Romanticism Schocken Books Scientific skepticism Secret photography Semiotics Serial killer Skansen Smithsonian Institution Stockholm City Museum Suicide Superiority (short story) Taxidermy The Last Minute The Philosopher Theft Thomas Kuhn Underdevelopment Viewing (funeral) Vincent Price Wax museum Wear and tear Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-320) and index Notes Print version record Subject Waxworks -- Scandinavia -- History -- 19th century Ethnological museums and collections -- Scandinavia -- History -- 19th century Popular culture -- Scandinavia -- History -- 19th century 20.19 art and society: other. ART -- History -- Modern (late 19th Century to 1945) Ethnological museums and collections Intellectual life Popular culture Waxworks Panoptica. Openluchtmusea. Tableau (vivant) Culture populaire -- Scandinavie -- 18e siècle. Scandinavia -- Intellectual life -- 19th century Scandinavia Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780691238272 0691238278

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