Hans Bellmer started working with dolls in 1933. He made a book of photographs of dolls and sent it to the surrealist artists in Paris. They published several photos from it in their magazine Minautaure. When Bellmer fled Germany for Paris in 1938, the doll was one of the few things he took with him.
Specifications
| Title | La poupée |
|---|---|
| Material and technique | Gelatine silver print on fibre-based paper |
| Object type |
Photograph
> Two-dimensional object
> Art object
|
| Location | This object is in storage |
| Dimensions |
Height 14,3 cm Width 14,5 cm |
|---|---|
| Artists |
Artist:
Hans Bellmer
|
| Accession number | 3397 (MK) |
| Credits | Purchased 1996 |
| Department | Modern Art |
| Acquisition date | 1996 |
| Creation date | in 1938 |
| Provenance | Galerie Cokkie Snoei, Rotterdam 1996 |
| Exhibitions | Bruges 1999; London 2007a; Rotterdam/London/Bilbao 2007-08; Rotterdam 2015b |
| Internal exhibitions |
Collectie - surrealisme (2017) |
| External exhibitions |
Dal nulla al sogno (2018) Surrealist Art - Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021) Only the Marvelous is Beautiful (2022) A Surreal Shock – Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021) A Surreal Shock. Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023) Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism. Highlights from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023) |
| Research |
Show research A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen |
| Literature | Taylor 2000, pp. 77-78; New York 2001, pp. 87-89; London/Rotterdam/Bilbao 2007-08, pp. 57, 136, 178, fig. 7.18; Wood 2007, pp. 12-13, 17 |
| Material | |
| Object | |
| Technique |
Gelatine silver print
> Bromide print
> Photographic printing technique
> Mechanical
> Planographic printing
> Printing technique
> Technique
> Material and technique
|
| Geographical origin | Germany > Western Europe > Europe |
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Entry catalogue A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van beuningen
Author: Marijke Peyser
In 1934 the French Surrealist magazine Minotaure. Revue artistique et littéraire published eighteen photographs Hans Bellmer had taken of his first doll with the accompanying text ‘Poupée: variations sur le montage d’une mineure articulée’.[1] Bellmer’s work was enthusiastically received by the Surrealists. His second doll, which he made in 1935, was even more flexible than the first thanks to the ball-and-socket joints he used. This doll could also be given a second pair of legs where the arms would normally be. The doubling of the genitals this caused may refer to Bellmer’s hermaphroditic desire to become a ‘woman’.[2] This desire was fulfilled with the birth of his twin daughters Doriane and Béatrice in 1943: ‘Doriane utterly fulfils the dream that I have always had to be able to taken on the bodily form of a little girl. I am that little girl,’ said the artist.[3]
Photographs of this second doll are often dramatic in composition, as is La poupée in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection. In this photo the doll is lying on a haystack: she appears to be the victim of a crime. The position of the four legs resembles a cross, which could refer to the Crucifixion of ChriSt This episode from the Bible greatly appealed to the imagination of an artist who was fascinated by images of martyrdom. In 1929 he visited Colmar, where he saw the Isenheim Altarpiece (1510-15) by Matthias Grünewald and Nicolaus Haguenauer. Mary Magdalen’s grief moved him profoundly. Bellmer described her sorrow, which is expressed by every inch of her body, in an undated letter to the art historian Patrick Waldberg. He added, ‘When a person’s reaction or gesture does not have repercussions throughout the body – whether it’s a contemporary photograph or a masterpiece – I’m not interested.’[4]
Bellmer also made more explicit references to the Crucifixion. In a photograph in Les jeux de la poupée, the doll has no head, just a trunk with two pairs of legs. The bottom pair of legs stands in woodland; the top pair is bound with ropes to a tree that is bifurcated in the shape of a cross. Round breasts in the shape of testicles hang left and right of the topmost feet.
All about the artist
Hans Bellmer
Katowice 1902 - Parijs 1975
The artist Hans Bellmer, originally from Poland, published anonymous photographs of his dolls in the book 'Die Puppe' (the doll) in 1934. Although the maker was...
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