Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer
Born 13 March 1902(1902-03-13)
Kattowitz, Germany
Died 24 February 1975(1975-02-24) (aged 72)
Paris, France
Nationality German
Field Photography, sculpture, painting, and poetry
Movement Surrealism, Berlin Dada
Works Die Puppe (1934), La Poupée (1935)
Influenced by Grosz · Kokoschka · Heartfield · Schlichter · de Chirico · Ernst · Arp · Grünewald · Offenbach · Pritzel · Freud
Influenced Oshii · Bufano · Marilyn Manson · Lankton · Hijikata · Kopecky · Witkin · Robert Whitaker

Hans Bellmer (March 13, 1902 - February 23, 1975) was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.

Contents

Biography

Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd 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. [1]Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar 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), 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.[2] After these events, he began to actually construct his first dolls. In his works, Bellmer explicitly sexualized the doll as a young girl. The dolls incorporated the principle of "ball joint" , which was inspired by a pair of sixteenth-century articulated wooden dolls in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum[3]

He visited Paris in 1935 and made contacts there, such as Paul Éluard, but returned to Berlin because his wife Margarete was dying of tuberculosis.[4]

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, as 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. Bellmer's work was welcomed in the Parisian art culture of the time, especially the Surrealists around André Breton, because of the references to female beauty and the sexualization of the youthful form. His photographs were published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure, 5 December 1934 under the title "Poupée, variations sur le montage d'une mineure articulée" (The Doll, Variations on the Assemblage of an Articulated Minor).[5]

He aided the French Resistance during the war by making fake passports. He was imprisoned in the Camp des Milles prison at Aix-en-Provence, a brickworks camp for German nationals, from September 1939 until the end of the Phoney War in May 1940.[6]

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 met Unica Zürn, who became his companion until her suicide in 1970.[7] He continued working into the 1960s.

Bellmer died 24 February 1975 of bladder cancer.[8] He was buried beside Zürn at Père Lachaise Cemetery with a tomb marked "Bellmer - Zürn".[9]

The interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and multiple amputee Lisa Bufano lists Hans Bellmer's doll work in her artist's statement as an influence.[10]

Controversy

In 2006 the Whitechapel Gallery in London, UK, removed 12 works by Hans Bellmer from an exhibition, for fear that the sexual overtones would be offensive to the Muslim population in the neighborhood. [11][12]

In popular culture

The New York-based post-punk band Bellmer Dolls took their name from the dolls of Hans Bellmer.

The 2003 film Love Object contains clear references to Bellmer's work, including the protagonist's obsessive relationship with a sex doll and the use of Bellmer's name as a leading character, Lisa Bellmer.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, a 2004 anime film, features elements of Bellmer's erotic and uncanny dolls.[13] Additionally, director Mamoru Oshii has referred to Bellmer's dolls as an inspiration for the film.[14]

A creature from the 2001 video game Silent Hill 2 named Mannequin bears a strong resemblance to Bellmer's dolls.

Exhibitions

Bibliography

Primary literature

Secondary literature

References

  1. ^ It's a Doll's Life, Ariel Hirschfeld, Haaretz
  2. ^ Webb, Peter, and Robert Short. Death, Desire and the Doll: The Life and Art of Hans Bellmer. Gardena: Solar Books, 2006, 19-21.
  3. ^ Hans Bellmer in The Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body
  4. ^ Webb and Short, 20, 31.
  5. ^ Webb and Short, 30.
  6. ^ Webb and Short, 81.
  7. ^ Webb and Short, 148, 180
  8. ^ Webb and Short, 187.
  9. ^ Webb and Short, 187.
  10. ^ http://www.lbufano.com/info.php?page=statement
  11. ^ http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/10/london-gallery-scraps-art-fearing-muslim-rage.html
  12. ^ http://www.muhammadimages.com/mayhem.php
  13. ^ Brown, Steven T. 2010. "Machinic Desires: Hans Bellmer's Dolls and the Technological Uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence". Mechademia. 3, no. 1: 222-253.
  14. ^ ""Ghost in the Shell 2:Innocence - The Inspiration"". DreamWorks and Go Fish Pictures. http://anime.about.com/library/weekly/bl_inspiration.htm. Retrieved 21 August 2011. 

External links