Hans Bellmer

ferrotyped, the photographer’s estate facsimile signature blindstamp on the image, numerical notations in pencil on the reverse, 1934

Estate of the artist

Adam Boxer, New York, 1998

Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Hans Bellmer, Photographe, December 1983 - February 1984

New York, International Center of Photography, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer, March - June 2001

Hans Bellmer, Photographe (Centre Georges Pompidou, 1983), pp. 20-21 (this print)

This print is on single-weight paper with a highly-glossy ferrotyped surface. Bellmer frequently ferrotyped his prints, which allowed for a maximum amount of detail in the image, as this print illustrates. The textures of the doll's plaster surface, the cushion underneath, and the rough wall behind are all rendered with great clarity and three dimensionality. Bellmer's facsimile signature blindstamp is in the upper right corner of the image. As is typical of ferrotyped prints, inconsistencies in the surface can be seen when the print is examined under raking light. Some faint silvering can be seen in the dark areas. The print is slightly rippled. It is trimmed to the image, and there is a small loss to the center of the right edge. On the reverse are glue remains, indicating that this print was at one time affixed to a mount. The numerical notations '12' (circled) and '50 x 40' (circled) are written in pencil on the reverse.
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This quintessential Hans Bellmer photograph is from the series he made in 1933 and 1934 in Berlin, documenting the construction of his first Doll figure.  Bellmer began work on the Doll in 1933, with the goal of ‘construct[ing] an artificial girl with anatomical possibilities which were capable of re-creating the heights of passion even to inventing new desires’ (quoted in Peter Webb, Hans Bellmer, p. 29).  Infused with his own brand of high-concept eroticism, Bellmer next dealt with the logistical challenge of creating a figure that would, in its appearance and articulation, meet his high expectations.  Working with his engineer brother Fritz, Bellmer first constructed a wooden armature with hinged joints.  This was slowly and carefully covered with flax fiber and plaster and shaped to resemble a human form, then fitted with an eerily convincing plaster face, visible in this image, dissociated from its body. 

Bellmer published a close variant of the image offered here in his 1934 book, Die Puppe, which included 10 sequentially-ordered photographs of the figure’s creation (see Lot 90 for the 1936 French edition of this seminal Bellmer book).  Also that year, André Breton and Paul Eluard published a suite of 18 of the Doll photographs in the Surrealist journal Minotaure, thus exposing Bellmer’s work to a fascinated new audience.

Bellmer’s project was strikingly ambitious for his time: a multi-faceted, multi-media effort designed to imbue his creation with life.  Incorporating sculpture, engineering, photography, and publishing, Bellmer’s entire oeuvre with the Doll was devoted to a single goal: to physically manifest the dark complexities of his imagination.