Lebende Bilder: Körperliche Nachahmung von Kunstwerken in der Goethezeit (review)

Goethe Yearbook 309 rian, even expected) a more richly textured reading of these art works. (The discussion may also have been deepened tf Bindman had consulted Blumenbach 's 1796 book Abbildungen naturhistorischer Gegenstände with its striking portraits of "typical" members of the five races.) The advantages of having careful and sympathetic discussions of such farflung material Ui the same volume wUl be evident. Thanks to Bindman's book, we now know that a great many eighteenth-century discourses—philosophical, art historical, Uterary, artistic, anthropological, anatomical—found themselves worrying the intersection of aesthetics and race. But Bindman, perhaps because of the scholarly care with which he considers each of his objects, shies away from forging his many separate discussions into an argument. What I found lacking in dus valuable study is a strong yet flexible theoretical backbone that would give shape to the body of material gathered here. Indiana University Michel Chaouli Birgit Jooss, Lebende Bilder: Körperliche Nachahmung von Kunstwerken in der Goethezeit. Berlin: Reimer, 1999. 448 pp. Goethe's influence on the tableau vivant genre was both critical and longUved ; he reflected theoreticaUy on the focal role of the "lebendes BUd" in drama, staged tableaux vivants and monodramas Ui Weimar court circles, and also intensified a fashionable craze for such performances in private and pubUc settings throughout the German-speaking countries because of their prominent appearance in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. (Metternich even organized tableaux vivants revolving around themes of peace and prosperity as evening entertainments during the Congress of Vienna Ui 1814.) Within three years of the novel's pubUcation in 1809, as Jooss documents Ui her book Lebende Bilder, there had already been rather lavish pubUc performances in Vienna and Berlin of the paintings featured Ui its pages (126). At the same time, Goethe chose, rather curiously, to find the origins of tableau vivant Ui folk art (the NeapoHtanpresepe or nativity scene), although he was familiar with the dramatic theories of Diderot, so crucial Ui this context (the folk derivation is given by the Architect Ui the Wahlverwandtschaften, and appears as weU in the Italienische Reise). He also identified the genre as a typicaUy dUettantish one, and it would certainly be hard to read Luciane's self-indulgent and exhibitionistic hobby—in short, her phüistinism—as a ringing endorsement of the aesthetic merits of "lebende Bilder." Goethe's apparent ambivalence is indicative of the cultural place of tableau vivant around 1800. Given the recent critical interest in the complex intersections between "aesthetic" and "trivial" culture Ui the late eighteenth century, the tableau vivant, a hybrid genre that always seems to teeter between art and entertainment, has emerged as a rich area of study, making Birgit Jooss's meticulous historical account of the genre especiaUy timely and important. FoUowing a brief methodological introduction, the second chapter of Jooss's study offers a concise but helpful historical summary of the precursors to eighteenth century tableaux vivants: antecedents to that genre, which became increasingly secular and "privatized" in the eighteenth century, include medieval passion plays, with their didactic "stumme Szenen," and ItaUan church processions . Unlike eighteenth-century tableaux vivants, Jooss concludes, there is no evidence that these early variants used concrete artworks as models. This point is significant, for what Martin Meisel has caUed the tendency to "reaUzation," that is the physical embodiment of specific, commonly recognizable paintings, became a defining aspect of tableaux vivants in nineteenth-century bourgeois 310 Book Reviews culture,1 so that Jooss's sociohistorical concern throughout her study with questions of art production, reproduction, reception and consumption is especiaUy enUghtening. The rich fourth chapter, entitled "Die Charakteristika der lebenden Büder, " identifies in great specificity the wide range of artists, subject matter and genres favored by practitioners of tableaux vivants Ui the Goethezeit. (What emerges here and throughout Jooss's book—and not for want of efforts to estabUsh more systematic categories—is the remarkable heterogeneity and openness of the genre. Although Jooss is careful to differentiate between the mimoplastic "attitude"—that is, the imitation of a classical sculpture—and the tableau vivant proper, this too becomes a rather slippery distinction.) Attention is paid to the technical and material aspects of production as weU (stage...