Valley of the Cyborgs

A post human re-imagining of the Surrealist representation of the female form. This digital animation project responds to the representation of the female form presented as a passive, entrapped entity in the Mannequin Street installation from the 1938 International Surrealism Exposition in Paris. Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto offers a Feminist post human vision of […]

The Mannequin and the Ruin

For André Breton the mannequin and the ruin represented the marvelous, these two images collide for me in my recollections of my home town, Christchurch. While studying for my undergraduate degree I took some photos of a rather odd display of mannequins, perhaps the stylist was a surrealist! The mannequins were on display in the […]

Journey to the Uncanny valley

I have been experimenting with Adobe CC 2015 Fuse, a programme that provides a simple entry into 3D character animation but as it provides human models it also offers admission to the uncanny valley and now makes it far easier to release hordes of 3D zombies into the virtual world via Photoshop. You can create […]

Cynthia the Celebrity Mannequin

In 1937 Life Magazine published a story about the latest celebrity about town, Cynthia the mannequin. Created by a soap carver, Lester Gaba, she was a break through in the manufacture of fashion mannequins for shop windows, she was made of plaster instead of the previous wax versions which were unstable and tended to melt […]

Animation tests

Some more animation tests that I have been working on, again starting with a faithful rendition of the mannequin but the more I drew the more they transformed into something quite different and generated some versions that I would not have made if I had just focused on creating still images. The one I made […]

The Line-up

When I started drawing these I originally assumed the artists had all used an identical mannequin, but they are all more different than I had anticipated, although the blonde overly shiny nylon hair does seem to be pretty consistent, except for the notable exception of the “widow” by Duchamp. The smiling model seems to have […]

The Final 3

After Man Ray’s mannequin three lesser known artists’ contributions are featured. This one by Oscar Dominguez is tethered to a soda fountain by rope wrapped around her right arm. The soda bottle dispenses a blue fabric representative of water, the fabric also wraps around her feet that makes her appear to have risen from the […]

Wolfgang Paalen

Reminiscent of the white shrouded mannequin by Seligmann, but instead of a dagger pierced egg atop her head this time a bat with wings extended hovers above her, its mouth open, ready to bite. Clad in mushrooms she seems to have risen from the forest floor. Her extended hand offers the viewer a handful of […]

Tanguy

The mannequin by Yves Tanguy was second in the line-up, adorned only with a belt around her waist and the wooden spindles that sit on her shoulders, on her chest rests a pendant that looks like a bull’s head and she stands upon soft pillows balancing with a staff. While her nakedness increases her vulnerability, […]

Espinoza

The mannequin by Spanish Surrealist Augustin Espinoza immediately brought to mind the fashion design of Jean Paul Gaultier, but with a rather darker edge to it. Espinoza had published a rather grisly novel in 1934, Crimen but had died by 1939. His work relates more to the dismemberment of the mannequin in Hans Bellmer’s series […]