{"id":56,"date":"2016-01-15T11:34:45","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T11:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=56"},"modified":"2018-10-02T16:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T15:52:49","slug":"wax-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2016\/01\/15\/wax-virginia\/","title":{"rendered":"Wax Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Catriona Livingstone, PhD student in English Literature.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of KCL\u2019s most famous alumni has returned to the college, taking up \u2018a room of her own\u2019 in the lobby of the building named in her honour.<\/p>\n

\u2018Wax Virginia\u2019, a work by sculptor Eleanor Crook, was unveiled \u2013 or \u2018unleashed\u2019 \u2013 on Wednesday evening, at an exciting event organised by Professor Clare Brant, co-director of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King\u2019s<\/a>, and well-attended by staff, students, and other Woolfish enthusiasts. The sculpture is the result of over 120 hours of work and careful research – Crook studied photographs of Woolf in order to trace the changes in her face over time and to select the particular moment \u2013 and emotion \u2013 which she wanted her sculpture of Woolf to occupy.<\/p>\n

\"2015-10-21<\/a>
Photo by Clare Brant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Introducing the event, Clare Brant explained that \u2018Wax Virginia\u2019 (a name chosen because of the symmetry of the initials WV with Woolf\u2019s initials VW) was conceived in a conversation with Dr. Ruth Richardson, a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Life-Writing Research, who commented that Woolf, despite attending courses in Greek, Latin, German and History at King\u2019s over the course of five years, from 1897 to 1902, had never actually been awarded a degree. Professor Brant suggested that a degree ceremony should be held \u2013 complete with a wax model of Woolf. The proposed ceremony has now been abandoned, but Professor Brant and Dr. Richardson commissioned Crook, a sculptor known for her anatomical and pathological waxworks, to make the model.<\/p>\n

Watch the video of Eleanor Crook working on ‘Wax Virginia’.<\/em> <\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Brant\u2019s introduction was followed by a speech by Anna Snaith, Woolf scholar and Professor of English Literature at King\u2019s, who described Woolf\u2019s enthusiasm for the waxworks at Westminster Abbey, about which she wrote an essay, \u2018Waxworks at the Abbey\u2019, and her interest in what Professor Snaith described as the \u2018uncanny effects of extreme realism\u2019 produced through the medium of wax. Professor Snaith also explored Woolf\u2019s interest in Kingsway (a relatively new thoroughfare at the time) and pointed out that Wax Virginia\u2019s placement in the lobby is highly appropriate given her \u2018outward-looking\u2019 attitude and her passion for London as a place of \u2018serendipity\u2019, \u2018trespass\u2019 and \u2018protest\u2019.<\/p>\n

A video<\/a> was then played which threw light upon Eleanor Crook\u2019s fascinating creative process. Particularly notable were the shots of Crook making subtle manipulations to Wax Virginia\u2019s eyelids \u2013 a process which can take the same amount of time as the whole rest of the face \u2013 and using the surface of a lemon to give Virginia\u2019s head a \u2018natural\u2019 texture. A lot of thought clearly went into Virginia\u2019s clothing, which was modelled upon a photograph of Woolf with her friend Lytton Strachey.<\/p>\n

The only surviving recording of Woolf\u2019s voice accompanied the video, ending with Woolf\u2019s comment about the power of words \u2018to mean different things to different people\u2019. In the Q&A which followed the video, Crook explained her attempts to retain the ambiguity of meaning which was, to Woolf, so important; instead of limited her sculpture to one single expression Woolf is caught between two, the right side of her face expressing a more \u2018introspective\u2019 mood, the left side more \u2018social\u2019 and engaged.<\/p>\n

When the cupboard doors were opened and Wax Virginia was finally revealed \u2013 and toasted by all of those present \u2013 it became clear just how true Crook had been to the spirit of Woolf\u2019s writings. When, in her feminist, pacifist polemic Three Guineas<\/em>, Woolf imagines her ideal \u2018women\u2019s college\u2019, she describes:<\/p>\n

“… An experimental college, an adventurous college. Let it be built on lines of its own. It must be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap, easily combustible material which does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Wax Virginia embodies the qualities of impermanence and contingency so valued by Woolf. She resists the cold authority of traditional sculptures of \u2018great\u2019 figures. Instead, she leans forward, engaged, alert, slightly ironic, looking as though she has just sat down for a moment in the lobby to read her book. You can imagine her feeling, as her character Rhoda does in The Waves<\/em>, that \u2018Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I dream; I dream.’<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Catriona Livingstone, PhD student in English Literature. One of KCL\u2019s most famous alumni has returned to the college, taking up \u2018a room of her own\u2019 in the lobby of the building named in her honour. \u2018Wax Virginia\u2019, a work by sculptor Eleanor Crook, was unveiled \u2013 or \u2018unleashed\u2019 \u2013 on Wednesday evening, at an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":412,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,2,4],"tags":[64,58,47,19,22,59,35,51,69],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-20th-21st-centuries","category-gender","category-visual-and-material-culture","tag-22-kingsway","tag-alumni","tag-events","tag-feminism","tag-life-writing","tag-london","tag-modernism","tag-sculpture","tag-virginia-woolf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}