HANS BELLMER
German
Although his primary identity is as a Surrealist
draftsman and painter, Hans Bellmer created such
a provocative series of images in that of his dolls, he
was awarded a singular place in photographic his-
tory. Often described as a poet of the erotic obses-
sion, his fetishistic creations have been found by
many to be disturbing in their extreme manipula-
tion of the female form. More recent scholarship
ties his choice of subject matter to opposition to the
rise of Nazism during the late 1920s, which had as
its ideal the perfection of the body. To make his
photographs, Bellmer built his own models. He
augmented his photographs, many of them hand-
toned, with prose and published the images and text
in various magazines or books.
Born in the Upper Silesian area of Germany in
1902, Bellmer initially studied as an engineer in
Berlin in 1924. He met artists Otto Dix and George
Grosz, both associated with the German Expressio-
nist movement; they taught him the fundamentals
of art and design. After marrying in 1927, he sup-
ported himself with an industrial advertising studio,
but by 1938, denounced, as were many other artists,
as ‘‘degenerate,’’ and grieving over the death of his
wife, Bellmer left Germany for Paris. Even before
his arrival he had made contact with the Surrealists
but maintained a rather marginal position amid
Andre Breton’s circle of artists.
The doll Bellmer first constructed between 1932
and 1933 had a complex genealogy. Toys and ob-
jects from his childhood that had been returned to
him upon his father’s death commingled with other
events, such an erotic obsession with a young cou-
sin, and his inspiration by a performance ofThe
Tales of Hoffman,which features a lifelike doll.
This doll was a metal and wood skeleton covered
in plaster that resembled a robot or puppet. But the
construction itself was not the object; it existed only
through the medium of photography. In his book
Die Puppe(1934) (The Doll), Bellmer collected 10
selected black and white photographs. Preceding
the photographs is a prose poem that details the
idea of tearing apart the mannequin and putting it
together again. Serving as an aesthetic counterpart
to the text, the series of photographs shows the
constant shift between construction and decon-
struction with no final creation left at the end of
the series, only a fragment.
In these photographs the female figure surrenders
to the voyeuristic gaze; in the paperback format of
the book this gaze is readily made available to all.
Bellmer also demonstrates an alternating play bet-
ween interior and exterior views. The exterior skin
fosters the expectation of seeing a natural body, but
the sight of the interior, of the constructed elements,
reveals a hopeless artificiality; an ever indeterminate
shifting between deception and disappointment
begins. The doll, both near to the grasp and un-
reachable, is what Bellmer has described as ‘‘an in-
citement to poetry.’’
A characteristic of this first construction is what
has been called a panorama of the female torso
made from a barrel-like structure fitted with objects
of ‘‘bad taste,’’ as Hans Bellmer’s brother has re-
marked. With stress placed on the left nipple of the
mannequin the panorama of the torso is set into
motion and one observes it in the figure’s navel.
With the ostensibly knowing gaze into the recesses
of the female body, the viewers own projection is
reflected back onto the male and female observer.
This kind of panorama of a female torso, however,
is never truly realized, but only in the construction’s
outlines does the idea suggest itself and thus it
remains in the viewers realm of fantasy.
Bellmer engages a fascination with the figure that
viewed in some of his works raises the question of
whether the figure is living or artificial. The photo-
graphic image stands as an analog in its capacity to
mortify the photographed object while at the same
time supplying a medium allegedly possessing more
authenticity than any other ever has. The photo-
graphed doll is in many ways a confusing creation
between art and nature, life and death.
From image to image Bellmer created various
combinations of body parts for the doll. They were
conceived in potentially limitless combinations and
in the photographs of the second doll his combining
of body parts continued. In building the second doll
in 1935, Bellmer sought to force a greater sense of
metamorphosis and volubility. An innovation in
this second doll was the torso’s ball-and-socket
joint—a construction inspired by a wooden jointed
puppet. The remarkable characteristic of the secondBELLMER, HANS