Since 1926 he had 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.Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch,1925).

In December 1934,there appeared in the Surrealist journal Minotaure a two-page spread introducing French readers to the erotic imagination of the German artist Hans Bellmer.Eighteen photographs Bellmer had taken of a life-size,female mannequin are grouped symmetrically around the title“Doll: Variations on the Montage of an Articulated Minor.”

The images show Bellmer's assemblage,made of wood,flax fiber,plaster,and glue,under construction in his studio or arrayed on a bare mattress or lacy cloth.Seductive props sometimes accompany the doll—a black veil,eyelet undergarments,an artificial rose.Naked or,in one case,wearing only a cotton undershirt,the armless doll is variously presented as a skeletal automaton,a coy adolescent,or an abject pile of discombobulated parts.In one unusual image,the artist himself poses next to his standing sculpture,his human presence rendered ghostly through double exposure.Here Bellmer's own body seems to dematerialize as his mechanical girl,wigged,with glass eyes,wool beret,sagging hose,and a single shoe,takes on a disturbing reality.

Preface

Michael Semff and Iwona Blazwick

Introduction

Michael Semff and Anthony Spira

The Engineer of Eros

Wieland Schmied

Hans Bellmer: Why Photography?

Alain Sayag

The Stakes at Play in Drawing Les Jeux de la poupee

Agnes de la Beaumelle

The Doll

Hans Bellmer

Plates

Chronology

Agnes de la Beaumelle and Laure de Buzon-Vallet

APPENDIX

Exhibition Checklist

Essay Captions

Selected Exhibitions and Projects

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments and Lenders

Photo Credits