Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema

Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality

by Steven Jacobs, Susan Felleman, Vito Adriaensens

Screening Sculpture and Cinema is the first book to focus on the relationship between sculpture and the silver screen. It covers a broad range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media, from early film’s eroticized tableaux vivants to enigmatic sculptures in modernist cinema. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. The book examines key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through a series of case studies and through an extensive reference gallery of 150 different films. Considering the work of directors like Georges Méliès, Jean Cocteau and Alain Resnais, as well as films like House of Wax, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans , this is an innovative exploration of two different media, their artistic traditions and their respective theoretical paradigms.

224 pages, Paperback

Published February 26, 2019

About the author

Steven Jacobs is an art historian specializing in the relationship between film and the visual arts. His research also focuses on the representation of architecture, the city and landscape in film and photography, as well as on themes in Belgian modern art history, including the work of Raoul De Keyser.
He has published internationally in journals such as Art Journal, October, History of Photography, The Journal of Architecture, Millennium Film Journal and De Witte Raaf. His books include Raoul De Keyser: Retour 1964–2006 (2007), The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (2007), Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts (2011), Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema (2017) and Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary (2020).
Alongside his academic work, Jacobs has curated exhibitions for institutions including SMAK Ghent and Museum Arnhem, and has programmed films for KASK-Cinema, Cinema Zuid and Cinematek Brussels. He teaches modern art at Ghent University and film history at the University of Antwerp.