Silent Partners: Artist & Mannequin from Function to Fetish
- Submitting institution
-
University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 12972
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Fitzwilliam Museum
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- January
- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Munro edited and wrote the catalogue (304pp) with three contributing authors. The book charts for the first time a trajectory in art since the Renaissance in which mannequins were used as an artist's aid, eventually assuming a conspicuous position as an uncanny presence in modern and contemporary art. Research crossed disciplines (art history, psychology, the history of science/medicine, literature, dance, performance and fashion history). It offered a re-reading of the work of many of the most important artists from the 17th century to the present day, including Nicolas Poussin, Thomas Gainsborough, Edgar Degas, Oskar Kokoschka and Jake and Dinos Chapman
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- "The exhibition Silent Partners: Artist & Mannequin from Function to Fetish is lead output in this multi-component item, which includes the catalogue alongside contextual information enabling the reviewer to visualise the exhibition. Munro curated the exhibition staged first at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2014 and subsequently at the Musée Bourdelle, Paris. It won the 2015 Apollo International Exhibition of the Year Award. The catalogue was edited and written by Munro with three contributing authors; it was accompanied by a series of podcasts from external academic collaborators.
This research project was the first to explore the use of the artist’s lay-figure, or mannequin, from the Renaissance to the 21st century, With materiality and process at its core, Munro’s interdisciplinary research presented in the catalogue and exhibition ranged across art history (in particular as related to artist’s materials and studio practice), psychology, the history of science/medicine, nineteenth and twentieth century literature, dance, performance and fashion history. Extensive research was carried out in art schools, libraries, museums, antiquarian dealers, patent offices, fashion houses and private collections across Europe, sourcing objects from Berkshire cellars to Bergamo bank vaults. Munro’s research revealed how, from being a studio tool, or prop, the mannequin moved centre stage to become the protagonist in the painting, photograph or film, eventually becoming a work of art in its own right.
By looking at the history and ubiquity of the artificial human figure in artists’ work, the exhibition and book invited a reconsideration of notions of realism and artifice, and a re-reading of the work of many of the most important artists of the 16th-21st centuries, including Poussin, Gainsborough, Millais, Degas, Kokoschka and the Chapman brothers."
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -