Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure (Getty) - Hardcover

Panzanelli, Roberta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892368772 ISBN 13: 9780892368778

Publisher: Getty Research Institute, 2008

Synopsis

The material history of wax is a history of disappearance—wax melts, liquefies, evaporates, and undergoes innumerable mutations. Wax is tactile, ambiguous, and mesmerizing, confounding viewers and scholars alike. It can approximate flesh with astonishing realism and has been used to create uncanny human simulacra since ancient times—from phallic amulets offered to heal distressing conditions and life-size votive images crammed inside candlelit churches by the faithful, to exquisitely detailed anatomical specimens used for training doctors and Medardo Rosso’s “melting” portraits. 
The critical history of wax, however, is fraught with gaps and controversies. After Giorgio Vasari, the subject of wax sculpture was abandoned by art historians; in the twentieth century it once again sparked intellectual interest, only soon to vanish. The authors of the eight essays in Ephemeral Bodies—including the first English translation of Julius von Schlosser’s seminal “History of Portraiture in Wax” (1910–11)—break new ground as they explore wax reproductions of the body or body parts and assess their conceptual ambiguity, material impermanence, and implications for the history of Western art. 

About this title

About the Author:

Roberta Panzanelli is a senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute. 

Review:

“Not only a useful scholarly collection on a neglected topic but also an opportunity to gauge and expand the theoretical presuppositions of art history as a discipline.”—Art History

“An excellent, well-orchestrated and magnificently illustrated collection of essays.  Its greatest merit is to attract scholarly attention to a complex medium, the study of which requires the attentive gaze of the art historian, the toolbox of the anthropologist and the erudition of the cultural historian.”—The Burlington Magazine 

“The extensive knowledge presented here captures the transient nature of wax and retains it within these pages for readers to appreciate.”—Leonardo 

 

“Thoughtfully conceived and insightfully presented.”—Library Journal

“Highly recommended.”—Choice

University and College Designers Association Award for Excellence in Design

“A valuable contribution to the scholarly discourse on wax figures. . . . These essays, collected in a handsome volume complete with dozens of color plates worthy of the Getty, also do well to include the first English translation of Julius von Schlosser’s 1910-1911 essay, “History of Portraiture in Wax.”—Winterthur Portfolio

About this edition

• Publisher: Getty Research Institute
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0892368772
• ISBN 13: 9780892368778
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336