studio, disaster

arboretum walk

new works

discussion of the uncanny, or how mannequins make me deeply uncomfortable

etymology

uncanny:  1590s: "mischievous;" 1773: in the sense of "associated with the supernatural," originally Scottish and northern English, from un- "not" + canny.  Canny is from the Anglo-Saxon root ken: “knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken.” Thus the uncanny is something outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. 

uncanny valley 

Roboticist Masahiro Mori's developed the hypothesis of the "uncanny valley" to describe people’s reactions to simulacra or robots crafted to be as human-like as possible.  There is a relational gap we experience when viewing familiar living people and their inanimate representations, whether in two-d or fully dimensional. In Mori’s diagram, the valley represents human’s negative emotional responses when confronted with replicas that mimic well but not perfectly.  A person’s innate suspicion and revulsion are triggered by these counterfeit effigies whose likenesses are too keen but still strange. If an object is crafted to resemble human likeness our affinity with the object grows according to it’s resemblance, to a point.  Once the object reaches close approximation it begins to repel.  Mori’s hypothesis is indebted to the work of both Jentsch and Freud's essays on the uncanny.

Hypothesized emotional response of human subjects is plotted against anthropomorphism of a robot, following roboticist Masahiro Mori's theory of the uncanny. The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem "almost human". Movement amplifies the emotional response.

gaba girl and the uncanny valley

cynthia: the mannequin who became a superstar

cynthia: cast with legs forever chastely crossed.  her maker, artist lester gaba took her everywhere in the new york night scene.  she was a famous socialite in-and-of-herself and, after life magazine featured her in a spread, she became a household name.  she must have only attended events where one could sit the duration.

"among all the psychical uncertainties that can become a cause for the uncanny feeling to arise, there is one in particular that is able to develop a fairly regular, powerful and very general effect: namely, doubt as to whether an apparently living being really is animate and, conversely, doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate – and more precisely, when this doubt only makes itself felt obscurely in one’s consciousness." 

on the psychology of the uncanny, 1906

ernst jentsch

creation myths

in the absence of evidence, art historians have assumed that she imitated him, and that her achievement consisted in executing his ideas.  the absence in claudel's case has been extreme.  for a very long time most of claudel's surviving works remained in private, uncatalogued collections.  the few traces of her production were scattered, if not lost, whereas rodin hoarded every conceivable bit of information pertinent to himself and passed it directly on to a permanently staffed institution.

anne higonnet, in the essay camille claudel and auguste rodin

significant others: creativity and intimate partnership

[emphasis, mine]

first roses from the garden

camille claudel

camille claudel: first student, then muse, finally co-creater with auguste rodin.  camille sculpts a languished, supine, female nude while wearing a full bustle and covered from her neck, to her wrists, to her ankles.

rodin, ever the unrepentant womanizer, drew up a contract for camille.  it was as bizarre as it was untrue.

In the future and starting from today 12 October 1886, I will have for a student only Mademoiselle Camille Claudel and I will protect her alone through all the means I have at my disposal through my friends who will be hers especially through my influential friends.

I will accept no other students so that no other rival talent could be produced by chance, although I suppose that one rarely meets artists as naturally gifted.

At the exhibition, I will do everything I can for the placement and the newspapers.

Under no pretext will I go to Mme.... to whom I will not teach sculpture anymore. After the exhibition in May we will go to Italy and and will live there communally for at least six months of an indissouble liasion after which Mademoiselle Camille will be my wife. I will be very happy to offer a marble figurine if Mademoiselle Camille wishes to accept it within four or five months.

From now until May I will have no other woman otherwise the conditions of this contract are broken.

If my Chilean commission comes through, we will go to Chile instead of Italy.

I will take none of the models I have known.

We will have a photograph taken by Carjat in the outfit worn by Mademoiselle Camille at the Academie, day clothes and possibly evening clothes.

Mademoiselle Camille will stay in Paris until May.

Mademoiselle Camille promises to welcome me to her atelier four times a month until May.

Rodin

after 1905, claudel appeared unwell and mentally distressed.  she suffered a miscarriage and the perfidy of her lover.  her brother (and benefactor) married, moved to china; she lost her financial support and moved into her studio.  she destroyed much of her work and accused rodin of robbing her ideas.  shortly after the death of their father, her brother had her committed against doctors' advice and she spent the next thirty years of her life in an asylum.  throughout that time, her brother referred to her in the past tense.  her funeral was attended by hospital staff.  her family did not attend her interment or claim her body.

around 90 works by claudel have survived the purge of her studio. in 1951, eight years after camille claudel's death, her brother organized an exhibition of her surviving works at the musee rodin.  safety in the ground, claudel could not protest her brother's ownership rights to the works nor their display- paraded in the rhetoric of rodin's tutelage.

 

left: Camille Claudel (1864-1943), La Petite Châtelaine, 1895, Marble - 34.6 x 28.4 x 22.7 cm
right: Camille Claudel (1864-1943), The prayer (Psalm), 1889