Tuva and Mongolia: cooperation in the fine arts

Статья посвящена культурным связям между Республикой Тыва и Монголией в связи со 100-летием российско-монгольских дипломатических отношений. Автор приводит обзор ряда фактов из истории тувинского и монгольского изобразительного искусства, совместных выставочных проектов. Так, ключевыми событиями, повлиявшими на творчество мастеров, стали первая крупная выставка тувинских художников и Нади Рушевой в Монгольской Народной Республике в 1984 году, другие выставки в Монголии, Москве и Туве, групповые обменные поездки монгольских и тувинских художников в XX–XXI веках. Важными для сотрудничества стали выставки 2017 года: рисунков Нади Рушевой в Улан-Баторе и восковых фигур «Хаан хаанов» из Музея Чингисхана (Улан-Батор) в Национальном музее имени Алдан-Маадыр Республики Тыва. The article is devoted to the issue of cultural ties between the Republic of Tyva (or Tuva) and Mongolia in view of the 100th anniversary of the Russian-Mongolian diplomatic relations. The author gives an overview of a number of facts from the history of Tuvan and Mongolian fine art, joint exhibition projects. Thus, the key events that influenced the work of the masters were the first large exhibition of Tuvan artists and Nadya Rusheva in the Mongolian People's Republic in 1984, other exhibitions in Mongolia, Moscow and Tuva, group exchange trips of Mongolian and Tuvan artists in the 20th and 21st centuries. Exhibitions of 2017 became important for the development of Tuvan-Mongolian cultural relations: drawings by Nadya Rusheva in Ulaanbaatar and wax figures “Khaan Khaans” from the Genghis Khan Museum (Ulaanbaatar) in the National Museum named after Aldan-Maadyr of the Republic of Tyva.

Cinema Panopticum: Wax, Work, Waxworks

“Cinema Panopticum” explores the central conceit of Waxworks—wax figures that come to life and threaten their creator—in the context of popular wax displays in the Weimar Republic. Commonly credited as a cult classic horror film, Waxworks is better understood in the period’s terminology as an “Episodenfilm,” a popular form of early narrative cinema that presented distinct episodes within a unifying frame narrative. Like other early German anthology films, Waxworks participates in the Weimar critique of historicism, foregoing the particularities of historical periods in favour of universal drives and philosophical themes. In this case, the framing narrative updates the classical Pygmalion myth for film-obsessed German modernity. The film is a testament to early cinema’s so-called “encyclopaedic ambition” and a cautionary tale about the potential fetishisation of the filmic image during the transitional period when cinema was establishing itself in opposition to older forms of representation such as wax figure displays.

Cinema, Phenomenology and Hyperrealism

Traditionally, hyperrealistic mannequins have embodied the dream (or rather the nightmare) of animating the inanimate: by imitating the living model to such an extent that any distinction becomes (almost) impossible, they blur the threshold between life and inert matter. It thus comes as no surprise that wax figures have often been taken as a symbol of cinematic creation and its attempt to recreate motion (a quality immediately associated with life) by means of a sequence of static frames. By focusing on three classic movies—Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Leni’s Waxworks (1923) and Michael Curtiz’s Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)—the essay explores the tension between reality and unreality as the crux of cinema tout court.

NOTES ON BRONZE POLE-TOPS WITH A GRIFFIN FROM SCYTHIAN ALEKSANDROPOL BARROW

The article proposes a scheme and algorithm for the manufacture of four bronze pole-tops from the Scythian Royal Alexandropol burial mound dated to the second half of the 4th century BC, which can serve as a basis for understanding the manufacturing process or the ancient repair of the similar Scythian replicated products. There is both a general idea of the manufacture of such bronze pole-tops by casting (according to a wax model or in detachable forms), and private judgments about the nature of castings, the correction of defects and the repair of pole-tops and their parts. But at the same time, specific details of the production process by different researchers (S. V. Polin, B. N. Mozolevsky, A. I. Melyukova, L. I. Babenko, A. R. Kantorovich, V. R. Erlikh, etc.) are assumed different, showing a very colorful picture. The process of making bronze pole-tops which were similar in composition, but different in the elaboration and decoration, most likely consisted of the following successive steps: creating a stencil of wax models of griffins in a rectangular frame; revision and decoration by hand of some individual parts on the surface of these wax figures (wings, paws, etc.), giving individuality to each object; attachment and molding of wax plugs; closure of the wax model by the clay mold, its drying and firing (?); casting in metal; destruction of clay mold; machining the surface of the casting. The pole-tops are casted from lead-tin bronze (copper is the base, tin is 9—12 %, lead is 2—3 %, traces of arsenic, iron and nickel). The pole-top (no. Dn 1853 1/6) differs by one feature. On the side edges of the nozzle are high dark triangles with clear boundaries, made by lead-tin plating. On the other objects such ornamentation (?) is not visible. Thus, the considered pole-tops were made using a single stencil and cast according to a single technical scheme.

From a Noble Substance to an Imitative Body. The Image and Meaning of Wax Figures in a Votive Offering

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne vol. 62, issue 4 (2014). In a wealth of votive gifts, the wax ones undoubtedly deserve special attention. They were common as early as in the Middle Ages, and they were used until the 20th century. There was a variety of such votive offerings, starting with candles, through lumps of wax, and ending with full-scale wax figures that started being used as a votive gesture at the break of the 13th and 14th centuries in the north of Europe. In the 15th and 16th centuries this custom became popular among the wealthy German, Austrian and Italian noblemen. Making wax votive figures took a lot of skill so they were made by specially qualified artists (in Italy wax figures called Boti were produced by sculptors called Cerajuoli or Fallimagini). Religious orders collaborated with the artists-artisans, undertaking to supply wax, whereas the artisans prepared wooden frames, natural hair, glass eyes, paints, textiles and brocade. In the following centuries, the production of wax figures developed ever more dynamically, especially in the north of Europe, with less skilled wax modellers, artisans and gingerbread makers often being their producers. The latter ones mainly made smaller wax figures, cast or squeezed from two-part concave models (this type of items in their form and type reminded of figures made of gingerbread). Wax votive figures (especially of children aged three to 12) funded in the area of Upper and Lower Franconia (the Bamberg and Würzburg dioceses) from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century are a separate and rather unusual phenomenon. Popularity of this votive offering became stable about 1880, in the years 1900–1910 it reached its climax; and in the 1950s it came to an end. Franconian offerings were always constructed in a similar way: they had wax faces and hands (more rarely feet), and the other members were made of wood, metal and some other padding materials. Dolls were a dominating model for the production of these votes, and that is why, like dolls, they had wigs made of natural hair on their heads, glass eyes and open mouths. A very important role was played by clothing, in which figures were willingly dressed; they were children’s natural, real clothes (girls were often dressed in the First Communion dresses); moreover, the effigies had complete clothing, which means they had genuine underwear, tights, leather shoes. The figures were supplied with rosaries and bouquets held in their hands, and on the heads of girls there were garlands. The figures were put in cabinets and glass cases, sometimes with wallpaper on the back wall, and they had a longer text on the front glass with the name of the child, or possibly of its parents, and the time when the figure was offered. Despite the many features making the Franconian offering deposits different from votive figures from other regions, all these items are joined by a timeless and universal idea, in which—to quote H. Belting—“an artificial body has assumed the religious representation of a living body…”

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.