- Hans Bellmer
Hans Bellmer (
13 March 1902 Katowice ,Silesia , –23 February 1975 Paris ,France ) was an artist best known for the life-sized pubescent femaledoll s he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him aSurrealist photographer .Biography
Since 1926 he had been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the
fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters ofOskar Kokoschka ("Der Fetisch", 1925).Bellmer's doll project is also said to have been catalysed by a series of events in his personal life, including meeting a beautiful teenage cousin in 1932 - and perhaps other unattainable beauties; and attending a performance of Jacques Offenbach's
Tales of Hoffmann (in which a man falls tragically in love with an automaton); and receiving a box of his old toys. After these events he began to actually construct his first doll. In his works, Bellmer explicitly sexualized the doll as a young girl. On the other hand, the doll incorporated the principle of "ball joint" , which was inspired by a pair of sixteenth-century articulated wooden dolls in theKaiser Friedrich Museum [Sue Taylor. " [http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/taylor.php Hans Bellmer in The Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body] ". (The Art Institute of Chicago).] .He visitedParis in 1935 and made contacts there such asPaul Éluard , but returned to Berlin because his wife Margarete was dying oftuberculosis .Bellmer's 1934 anonymous book "The Doll" ("Die Puppe"), produced and published privately in Germany, contains 10 black-and-white photographs of Bellmer's first doll arranged in a series of "tableaux vivants" (living pictures). The book was not credited to him, he worked in isolation, and his photographs remained almost unknown in Germany. Yet Bellmer's work was eventually declared "degenerate" by the Nazi Party, and he was forced to flee Germany to
France in 1938.His work was welcomed in the
Paris ian art culture of the time, especially theSurrealists underAndré Breton , because of the references to female beauty and the sexualization of the youthful form. His photographs were published in the Surrealist journal "Minotaure ".He aided the resistance during the war, making fake passports; and was imprisoned in the
Camp des Milles prison atAix-en-Provence for most ofWorld War II .After the war, Bellmer lived the rest of his life in Paris. Bellmer gave up doll making, and spent the following decades creating erotic drawings, etchings,
sexually explicit photographs, paintings and prints of pubescent girls. In 1954 he metUnica Zürn , who became his companion until her suicide in 1970. He continued making work into the 1960s.Reactions to Bellmer's works
On 19th Sept 2006, London's influential
Whitechapel Art Gallery withdrew several works from a major 150-work Bellmer retrospective exhibition, due to fears of offending [http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-06T172324Z_01_L06909511_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ARTS-MUSLIMS.xml] London'sIslam ic community.References to Bellmer's work
*In
Silent Hill 2 one of the monsters called Mannequins have two sets of hips and legs, joined at the waist, one reversed and upside down as to mimic breasts and arms. These Mannequins are also used in a similar symbolic fashion, representing suppressed sexual urges, and the destruction of innocence.
*The female robots in the Japanese film are based on Bellmer's design. In one scene, his name is shown in an open book. There was even a doll created for the movie modeled in the same general style. His book "The Doll" appears briefly in the movie "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" as a plot device.
*Japanesemanga artistMitsukazu Mihara has acknowledged influence by Bellmer in her manga Doll.
* "Guys 'n' Dolls: Art, Science, Fashion & Relationships"." [http://www.patricold.com/dollwerks/guysndolls.html] A major exhibition held during theBrighton Festival in 2005 of artists who have worked with the doll, with exhibits from Hans Bellmer, Oskar Kokoschka,Man Ray ,Paula Rego ,Patric Old , and more.
*The famous 1966 "Butcher Sleeve" photograph ofThe Beatles by Robert Whitaker was strongly influenced by Bellmer's work. [cite book | last = McKinney | first = Devin | title = Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History | publisher = Harvard University Press | year = 2003 | isbn = 067401202X] The "Butcher" image, depicting The Beatles draped with slabs of meat and dismembered doll parts became famous when it was used as the front cover photo for theCapitol Records U.S.A. Beatles compilation album "Yesterday and Today" in 1966. The album was briefly released with the Whitaker photo, but almost all copies of the original release were hastily withdrawn after a storm of complaints from retailers. Original copies of the "Butcher Sleeve" version of the LP have since become among the most valuable LPs ever released.
*The Brooklyn based punk-goth trioBellmer Dolls derived their name from Bellmer's famed war era work
*The photography and artwork on Naked City's 1993 album "Absinthe" is also influenced by Bellmer's work.
*Bellmer's work is featured on theTzadik Records recording ofJohn Zorn 's String Quartets
*UK street artist Insa's "Graffiti Fetish project" [http://www.woostercollective.com/2005/04/london_may_12_insas_graffiti_f.html] is heavily influenced by Bellmer's erotic drawings such as Le Bas Reyes.References
Further reading
* "Hans Bellmer: Anatomie du Désir" (2006, [Éditions Gallimard /
Centre Pompidou ] ).
* Sue Taylor. "Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety" (2002,MIT Press).
* Pierre Dourthe. "Hans Bellmer: Le Principe de Perversion". (1999, France).
* Therese Lichtenstein, "Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer,"University of California Press , 2001.
* "The Doll", Hans Bellmer, Atlas Press, London, 2006, trans. Malcolm Green (first complete translation of Bellmer's suite of essays, poems and photos from the final German version)
*Robert C. Morgan . "Hans Bellmer:The Infestation of Eros", in A Hans Bellmer Miscellany, Anders Malmburg, Malmo and Timothy Baum, New York, 1993External links
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=736&page=1 Tate Collection Page]
* [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A452&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1 MoMA Collection Page]
* [http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/taylor.php "Hans Bellmer in The Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body"] by Sue Taylor.
* [http://www.whitechapel.org/content.php?page_id=2672 Hans Bellmer] 20 September - 23 November 2006 / The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
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