{"id":5421,"date":"2014-11-21T17:23:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T17:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/verityholloway.com\/?p=5421"},"modified":"2014-11-22T12:10:10","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T12:10:10","slug":"review-silent-partners-at-the-fitzwilliam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verityholloway.com\/?p=5421","title":{"rendered":"Review: Silent Partners at The Fitzwilliam"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a good couple of months for writing. After getting some lovely responses over my last short story (it’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize \u2013 I got the news in the middle of the night during a bout of chronic pain, and I initially thought it was my medication playing tricks) I’ve been putting concerted effort into finishing the novella that’s been lingering about since last winter. To be annoyingly vague, it concerns the nocturnal lives\u00a0of mannequins, so, for a bit of research and a break from my desk, I visited Silent Partners<\/a> at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum.<\/p>\n

\"Reposing,<\/a><\/p>\n

“Silent Partners is a ground-breaking exhibition devoted to the artist’s mannequin, that uncovers its playful, uncanny – and sometimes disturbing – history from the Renaissance to the present-day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The exhibition is far bigger than I anticipated. Three large rooms of artists’ lay figures, anatomists’ models, and fashion clotheshorses charting the evolution of the human simulacrum\u00a0from religious devotion to arch Surrealism, along with striking photography and disembodied limbs\u00a0dotted around the rest of the\u00a0Fitz.<\/p>\n

Life-sized dolls, no matter how beautifully made, are creepy, and the curators understand. From the moment you enter Silent Partners, you’re hit by the ‘uncanny valley’ effect. Viewing Walter Sickert’s life-sized wooden lay figure \u2013 laid out in a coffin, no less \u2013 I realised I was experiencing the same sensation of voyeurism I get when viewing Egyptian mummies or one of Doctor Gunther’s anonymous corpses. CT scans add to that sense of the uncanny. The mannequins once had life and purpose. Now they lie still.<\/p>\n

To my perverse delight, the Fitz has sourced one of Thomas Edison’s horrendous talking dolls. It’s about as adorable as a vocal\u00a0manifestation in a poltergeist haunting. The business went bust in the 1890s because children were understandably terrified. Dolls \u2013 blonde and smiling or otherwise \u2013 have the power to\u00a0scare, whether you want them to or not.<\/p>\n