Wax Figures Research Articles

Music and Imagination

When we inquire into the nature of works of art we can see at a glance that there is a good deal of evidence against aesthetic idealism, the view that artworks are, in the final analysis, imaginary objects in the minds of their creators. We believe, for instance, that the National Gallery not only contingently but in some sense necessarily weighs more than merely the sum of the empty building, the people in it, and the assorted fixtures. This sum must also include the weight of canvases, the oils on them, carved stone and marble, and so on, all of which add up to substantially more than nothing, which is at least the approximate weight of imaginary things. We know that it takes considerably more than a verbal utterance or acoustical blast to transport an artwork, and we also know that a visit to the gallery is not going to amount to an afternoon spent with wax figures of unicorns, flying horses, present and bald kings of France or, for that matter, talking teapots. In short, intuition protests against the idealist theory that if works of art are imaginary objects, they cannot be the things we go to see in the gallery; and if they are imaginary objects then, like a waxen Peter Pan, they are surely not art. Mellon and Meinong simply have different kinds of collections.

Curiosities Too Numerous to Mention: Early Regionalism and Cincinnati's Western Museum

IN THE LATE 1830S, TRAVELERS FAMILIAR WITH NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN museums found little in the display rooms of Cincinnati's Western Museum to differentiate it from many other similar museums. Posted among its glass cases of insects, rocks, bones, coins, and Indian artifacts stood life-size wax figures of Washington, Jackson, Charlotte Corday, and Napoleon Bonaparte; oil paintings darkened by lamp soot hung near the ceiling. Dotted about the displays were curiosities of doubtful provenance: the head of an Egyptian mummy, a sepulchral lamp from Pompeii, and such shams as a mermaid constructed by stitching the head and hands of a monkey to the body of a fish. Ranged along one wall were rows of glass jars holding hideously deformed animals, some suspiciously waxy, suspended in cloudy liquids. In the Museum's attic, however, was the eccentric attraction that had brought the Western Museum popular fame-The Infernal Regions, a mechanized and electrified version of Dante's Hell that entertained a paying audience every night but Sunday with a shrieking assemblage of imps, demons, and animal and human grotesques alternately freezing and burning. The show was enclosed by an iron rail electrified by means of a hand generator, and it delivered smart shocks to visitors attempting to touch the crawling and writhing figures within. Knowledgeable travelers and observers tended to find the Museum's displays, mean as they are, also miserably deficient in order and arrangement, and The Infernal Regions above to be a piece of charlatanism . . ., gross and impious humbug.' In fact, by the 1830s little but its appellation remained to suggest that the Western Museum's original intent had differed widely from the dusty incoherence travelers saw. The Museum's founders had, two decades earlier, created a regional museum to serve as both a compendium and an illumination of

The case of the exploding perception

My brother, whom we may call Smith, was touring the London Wax Museum. In need of information, he approached a nearby bobby. But no sooner had he started "Excuse me, sir" than he realized, to his own chagrin and his companion's amusement, that he was speaking to a figure of wax. In such a case, we may say, one experiences an 'explosion' of perception: at first Smith sees (is perceptually presen ted with) a bobby, but then that perception 'explodes' and he sees a wax figure. (The imagery stems from Husserl.1) What are we to make of such perceptual 'explosions'? From considerations of the case above, together with some related cases, we shall draw a basic account of the intentionality of perception, an account of the basic intentional or phenomenological structure of seeing an individual. Our account permits an illuminating analysis of these cases of perceptual explosion and so finds motivation and support therein. So goes part I. In part II we pursue a more precise formulation of our characterization of these cases, finding motivation and support for a central part of Hintikka's logic of perception. And in part III we consolidate the results of parts I and II by drawing on Husserl's basic approach to intentionality. An appendix pursues technical aspects in a possible-worlds framework.

The Wax Figures in The Duchess of Malfi

The Wax Figures in The Duchess of Malfi

Wax Figures and Mannequins in Solana

Jos6 Gutierrez-Solana (1886-1945) is primarily known as a painter who is only recently coming into his own as one of the top Spanish artists of the twentieth century. Like other Spanish painters of his generation he was personally acquainted with such literary figures as Baroja, Unamuno, and Valle Inclin. A great attraction at Ram6n G6mez de la Serna's Tertulia de Pombo, Solana developed an interest in writing during his late twenties and thirties. Spurred by a need to write down certain things he could not paint and to express his vision of the world in a different medium from his paintings, he produced several curious books which can best be described as

Miniature wax sculpturing: a thirty-year experiment

In 1929 the University of Southern 'Cali­ fornia School of Dentistry began an ex­ perimental project of wax figure carving for freshmen students. The project is still being carried on. A comparison of grade records over the past 30 years with the original evaluations of the carvings shows that accurate prediction of out­ standing students, misfits and under aver­ age students has averaged about 90 per cent correct. The chalk carving aptitude testing program adopted in the early 1950’s by the American Dental Associa­ tion has largely eliminated the misfits who might otherwise have spent needless time and money in attempting the study of dentistry.

A Wax Works Show

Ladies and gentlemen: We are going to present tonight for your approval the greatest exposition on earth. One by one before your very eyes we will bring out a collection of lhe greatest mathematicians of ancient and modern times that have ever lived on the earth. We will not present their pictures to you, or even their mummified bodies to horrify you. But we will show you wax figures of them, so beautifully and artfully made that you may think they are the genuine people come to life again. But that is not all.

British Museum Acquisitions

AMONG the notes on recent acquisitions by the British Museum in the British Museum Quarterly, 9, No. 3, particulars are given of sources from which came part of the sum required to make up the initial payment for the Eumorfopoulos collection of Chinese and Far Eastern art, and progress is reported in the allocation of the collection to Bloomsbury and South Kensington. A contribution of £5,000 was received from the National Art Collections Fund, £5,000 from Sir Percival David and £1,000 from the Universities' China Committee in London. The bequest to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum of three quarters of the residue of the estate of the late J. R. Vallentin for the purchase of works of art for the two museums was also allotted to this use. It is stated that the collection is so large that it will be possible to place a certain number of pieces on loan in some of the leading provincial museums. When, however, the scheme for a Museum of Oriental Art comes into being, it is intended to recall these loans, and the whole collection will be brought together again to form an important part of what, it is hoped, will be the finest museum of oriental art in existence. Parts of the collection already have been, or are in course of being, described, but accounts of special classes of exhibits are to be prepared and published from time to time. Among other notes in this issue of an interesting publication which is not so widely known as it deserves, is an account of the fragments of the unknown gospel acquired last summer, to which Mr. H. L. Bell has recently directed attention in The Times, and descriptions with illustrations of an Egyptian wax figure which, if it be, as is thought, a model for making moulds for casting bronze figures, is indeed rare, and some unique objects of a varied nature from Roman London.

An Egyptian Wax Figure and Other Antiquities

An Egyptian Wax Figure and Other Antiquities

Offering of a Wax Figure with an English Arrow at Boulogne.

Offering of a Wax Figure with an English Arrow at Boulogne.