The Mannequin – from Tool to Projection Figure.

A Study of the Mannequin in the Painting Portrait of »Henri Michel-Lévy« (1878/79) by Edgar Degas

Abstract

The mannequin is subject to a change of meaning in the 19th century. Being used primarily as a studio tool since the Renaissance, it increasingly became a pictorial motif of its own in the early modern era. Because of its capacity of representing human beings, it serves as a perfect projection screen for social discourses. In the painting Portrait of Henri Michel-Lévy (1878/79) by Edgar Degas several levels of interpretation are intertwined that arise around Degas’ painter colleagues and his carelessly thrown mannequin. The scene reflects not only the relation between painter and model, but equally that between man and woman as well as the associated contemporary discourses of naturalness and artificiality. Being lifeless but animatable, the particular component of the uncanny is inherent in the doll. Degas’ portrait invites to analyze the doll’s complexity and ambivalence in a subtle way