Art Of The Day Weekly
#382 - from 2 April 2015 to 8 April 2015
Anonymous, Neoclassical Mannequin, Italy, 1810. © Accademia Carrara, City of Bergamo.
Life as a model
PARIS – Coming from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, this is undoubtedly one of the most surprising exhibitions of the year: the use by artists over centuries of wooden mannequins or cloth models. The theme is not as frivolous as it seems. Pygmalion taught us that those make-believes could become more real than life itself. The exhibit reminds us in particular, through photographs, the extraordinary story of Oskar Kokoschka's doll: the artist had been left broken hearted by Alma Mahler, and had her brought back to life by a seamstress. He had this substitute Alma dressed up, went out with her into town, slept with her until one day he cut off her head. Between paintings by Burne-Jones and de Chirico, photos by Herbert List and Bellmer, films by Méliès, we drift from glass eyes to unbelievable wax complexions. The exhibit places us in a delightful "cabinet de curiosités": we discover Edison's talking dolls - a real commercial flop - or the reconstitution of the "great machine" by Nicolas Poussin, his theatre of figurines in a wooden box. On nights with a full moon, one can imagine all these wise mechanisms coming to life.
• Mannequin d'artiste at the musée Bourdelle (which just reopened), from 1st April to 12 July 2015.