The Experimental Poetry of Hans Bellmer Dolls

When it appeared in the 1930s, Surrealism swept the world by storm, offering a new kind of aesthetic based on the imaginary worlds found on the brinks of one’s fancy. Inspired by the scientific but also metaphysical and even occult explorations of the unconscious, the proponents of this movement produced a myriad of works that were found strange, grotesque, and bizarre. Yet, Hans Bellmer dolls and its accompanying photographic series is perhaps one of the most bizarre works to come out of the surrealist group in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Bellmer, who focused mostly on desire, longing, and fetishism, came to prominence in the mid-1930s. A former draftsman and an owner of an advertising company, he drew enormous attention among the avant-garde ranks with his puzzling dolls. Also a writer, he referred to his doll projects as "experimental poetry."

Upon assembly, the first doll Bellmer produced was photographed and, as such, published in the surrealist magazine Minotaure without any specific artist statement. Strange and bewildering, the doll of unnatural shapes, often headless or faceless, was always featured facing away from his camera. Infused by the writings of André Breton, the theories of Sigmund Freud, and the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925), Bellmer seemed to have explored the female gaze through his work.

This particular subject matter that has been present in the artworks of many other male Surrealist artists were, in the last couple of decades, characterized as essentially misogynistic. When it comes to Bellmer, such a conclusion can be applicable, although his Imaginarium, including these dolls, has remained somewhat mysterious despite the fact the artist himself wrote extensively about his artmaking approach.

The Origins of Hans Bellmer Dolls

Numerous scholars have concluded that Hans Bellmer doll project was developed as a reaction to several events in his personal life. It seems that the year 1932 was especially important, when the artist met a beautiful teenage cousin, saw a performance of Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, in which a man falls tragically in love with an automaton, and received a box of his old toys.

The following year, together with his younger brother, Fritz, Bellmer made the first doll in Berlin. Although lost, this particular object was about fifty-six inches tall, and it consisted of a torso made of flax fiber, glue, and plaster; a mask-like head of the same material with glass eyes, a long wig, and a pair of legs made from broomsticks. One of the legs ended with a wooden foot, while the other was encased in a plaster shell, joint at the ankle and knee.

Very soon, the second set of hollow plaster legs followed, with wooden ball joints serving for the doll's hips and knees. The first doll had no arms, but Bellmer documented a single wooden hand among the assortment of doll parts in an untitled photograph of 1934, as well as in a few later ones.

The same year, Bellmer anonymously produced and published a book, The Doll (Die Puppe), consisting of 10 black-and-white photographs of the artist's first doll arranged in a series of tableaux vivants (living pictures). Since the book was made in isolation, his photographs remained basically unknown in Germany.

By 1935, Bellmer gained notoriety within the Surrealist group after eighteen photographs of this doll were, as mentioned, published in the Winter 1934-1935 issue of the magazine Minotaure. The photographs of the doll in various states of assembly were accompanied by a unison subtitle Variations sur le montage d’une mineure articulée (Variations on the assembly of an articulated minor). The photographs of the Doll became as important as the sculpture itself, opening up new voyeuristic and fetishistic possibilities.

The Notion of the Female Gaze

Although the doll that appeared in Minotaur was disassembled and reassembled into various unnatural shapes, each photograph featured the doll’s head at a side profile, never directed toward the viewer. The eyes were mostly left separate from the face and were positioned next to the body. The second version of the doll, which Bellmer made right after the completion of his first one, had a far more complex body - it featured the first doll’s original head and hand, a ball representing the abdomen, at least one arm, two pelvises, two sets of legs, and extra accessories.

The French poet and a prolific member of the Surrealist group, Paul Éluard, was perplexed by the absence of doll's gaze and expressed it in the collection of prose poems made for Bellmer’s second doll. Alongside one photograph, he wrote: "It’s a girl! – Where are her eyes? – … It’s a girl, it is my desire!". Bellmer published Éluard’s notes alongside his own essays about his dolls.

Apparently, the artist and his peers had a particular interest in the doll’s gaze above other parts of the body. Bellmer sexualized the doll as a young girl, so this particular object underlines the intensity of the male gaze – the doll is observed by the artist and a close circle of his friends, most of them man, while the doll is prevented from looking back at them. This voyeurism saturated with erotic tension can be interpreted as disturbing and perhaps potentially violent; however, some scholars claim that Bellmer initiated his doll project as a reaction to the erection of the Third Reich. Right after taking over the power, the Nazis introduced the cult of the perfect bodies typical for the Arian race, meaning that Bellmer’s almost disabled dolls stood in strong opposition to the new German state.

The Legacy of Hans Bellmer

Eventually, his work was tagged as "degenerate" by the Nazi Party, and the artist had to emigrate to France in 1938, where he was welcomed by the Surrealists gathered around André Breton. The following year, Bellmer was imprisoned in a brickworks camp for German nationals, where he stayed until the end of the Phoney War in May 1940. Until the end of WW II, he was active in the French Resistance, and after the end of the war, the artist continued living in Paris for the rest of his life.

While doll-making was no longer among his interests, in the following decades, Bellmer produced erotically charged artworks spanning drawings, etchings, paintings, prints, and photography. This prolific artist died in 1975 of bladder cancer in Paris.

Ever since, his work has been thoroughly explored, often being interpreted in regard to Bellmer’s constant struggle against his father, the police, and ultimately, fascism and the state. The art historian Hal Foster wrote that, through these dolls, Bellmer explored "a sadistic impulse that is also self-destructive," forcing the subject to confront "its greatest fear: its own fragmentation and disintegration." The art historian Rosalind Krauss has also described Bellmer’s use of the Doll imagery as a tactic:

To produce the image of what one fears, in order to protect oneself from what one fears – this is the strategic achievement of anxiety, which arms the subject, in advance, against the onslaught of trauma, the blow that takes one by surprise.

The puzzling and explicitly erotic imagery has inspired generations of creatives, including musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists, but also numerous scholars. Looking from a contemporary stance, Hans Bellmer dolls stand as some of the best works of Surrealism as their captivating presence still evokes numerous interpretations and responds to the contemporary debates around the strange, transgressive, and disabled bodies.

Featured image: Hans Bellmer, La Poupée. MoMA, New York, July 2009, via Gwenael Piaser