Issue Editors: No\u00e9mie \u00c9tienne, University of Bern;
\nMeredith Martin, NYU and Institute of Fine Arts, New York<\/p>\n
Journal18 #3 Lifelike (Spring 2017) During the eighteenth century, a range of artistic productions sought to simulate motion and life in new ways. At the same time, individuals became ever more preoccupied with performing or embodying static works of art. Echoing contemporary discussions in artistic and literary discourses around vraisemblance and verisimilitude, as well as mimesis and imitation, these preoccupations also tapped in to larger social and intellectual debates about matter, mankind, and machines at a global level.<\/p>\n This issue of Journal18 explores these fundamental tensions between art and life, movement and permanence that obsessed the worlds of art, science, and entertainment during the eighteenth century. What was considered \u201clifelike\u201d in this period? How did artwork \u2014among them taxidermy tableaux, moving statues, nautilus cups, and automaton clocks\u2014engage with this notion and participate in redefining it? What was at stake in staging a convincing simulation of life, and what purposes\u2014political, pedagogical, or otherwise\u2014did it serve? What role did ephemeral performances or spectacles play in generating such illusions and in shaping their significance? And how might we interpret these acts historically today?<\/p>\n In addition to full-length articles, we have assembled a series of shorter essays on the theme of \u201cWaxworks.\u201d More than any other material in the eighteenth century, wax seems to have provoked debates about the permeable boundaries between illusion and imitation, art and science, absence and presence. At the same time, objects made of wax\u2014from La Specola\u2019s famous anatomical Venus to busts portraying victims of the French Revolution modeled from life by Marie Tussaud\u2014have the potential to disrupt traditional categories and hierarchies of art history, which is perhaps one reason why wax has emerged in recent years as such an exciting and provocative field of study.<\/p>\n ARTICLES<\/p>\n Staging Life: Natural History Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century Europe<\/a> Vitalist Statues and the Belly Pad of 1793<\/a> Nautilus Cups and Unstill Life<\/a> Pyrotechnic Profusion: Fireworks, Spectacles, and Automata in Time<\/a> WAXWORKS<\/p>\n Vividness without Vitality: The Specola Venus\u2019s Intersecting Afterlives<\/a> Antoine Benoist\u2019s Wax Portraits of Louis XIV<\/a> Anatomy of the Bel Effet: Wax between Science and Art<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.journal18.org<\/a><\/p>\n
\nVal\u00e9rie Kobi<\/p>\n
\nAmelia Rauser<\/p>\n
\nEugenia Zuroski<\/p>\n
\nLihong Liu<\/p>\n
\nDavid Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
\nRobert Wellington<\/p>\n
\nCharles Kang<\/p>\n