Introduction: The Marble Camera
According to Rudolf Arnheim, “much sculpture lacks the essential quality of life, namely, motion.” This is why, no doubt, marble statues and plaster casts played such an important role in the works of early photographers of the late 1830s and 1840s, who had to cope with long exposure times. Given this perspective, what can be said about the relation between sculpture and film, a medium often first and foremost characterized by motion? This book deals with a wide range of magical, mystical, cultural, historical, formal, and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Apart from the contrast between stillness and movement, sculpture and film can be seen as opposites in other ways. Whereas sculpture is an artistic practice that involves not only static but also material, three-dimensional, and durable objects, the cinema produces kinetic, immaterial, two-dimensional, and volatile images.