In his pioneering History of Portraiture in Wax, Julius von Schlosser traced back the age-old history of a material which at that time seemed to be already antiquated, if not obsolete. Wax sculptures were rejected and ousted from art history because of their excessive similarity and adherence to models. One hundred years later, however, hyperrealism got its revenge with Maurizio Cattelan’s celebrated hanging children. Moving from that controversial artwork and focusing on the heated polemics over it, my paper will address the question of the well-known Unheimlichkeit of wax figures, investigated by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud in the early Twentieth Century and nowadays becoming increasingly topical thanks to the recent debate about the existence and nature of the so called Uncanny Valley.

Nel 1911 Julius von Schlosser pubblicava una pionieristica Storia del ritratto in cera in cui ripercorreva le millenarie sorti di un materiale che già da tempo sembrava definitivamente tagliato fuori dalle vicende della storia dell’arte, condannato a giusto oblio a causa della sua eccessiva aderenza al modello. Un secolo più tardi, tuttavia, l’iperrealismo si prende una famosa rivincita con le effigi dei bambini impiccati di Maurizio Cattelan. Prendendo le mosse dall’analisi di quest’opera e dalle violente reazioni che fu in grado di suscitare, il paper si propone di inquadrare la questione delle figure di cera nella più ampia problematica del “perturbante”, affrontata da Jentsch e Freud all’inizio del Novecento e recentemente tornata di prepotente attualità grazie al dibattito scatenatosi intorno all’esistenza e alla natura della fantomatica “Uncanny Valley”.

Unheimlich. Dalle figure di cera alla Uncanny Valley

Pietro Conte
2011-01-01

Abstract

In his pioneering History of Portraiture in Wax, Julius von Schlosser traced back the age-old history of a material which at that time seemed to be already antiquated, if not obsolete. Wax sculptures were rejected and ousted from art history because of their excessive similarity and adherence to models. One hundred years later, however, hyperrealism got its revenge with Maurizio Cattelan’s celebrated hanging children. Moving from that controversial artwork and focusing on the heated polemics over it, my paper will address the question of the well-known Unheimlichkeit of wax figures, investigated by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud in the early Twentieth Century and nowadays becoming increasingly topical thanks to the recent debate about the existence and nature of the so called Uncanny Valley.
2011
2
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
PSICOART Conte.pdf

non disponibili

Dimensione 572.22 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
572.22 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in ARCA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/3709072
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact