Bellmer: Taylor & Hatje Cantz

Inside Flap:

“Bellmer, best known for his life-size pubescent [youthful] dolls, devoted an artistic lifetime to creating sexualised images of the female body – distorted, dismembered, or menaced in sinister scenarios. In this book, Taylor draws on psychoanalytic theory to suggest why Bellmer was so driven by erotomania as well as desire for revenge, suffering, and the safety of the womb. Although he styled himself as the quintessential [typical] Oedipal son, an avant-garde artist in perpetual [continuous] rebellion against a despised father, Taylor contends that his filial [loving] attitude was more complex than he could consciously allow. Tracing a repressed homoerotic attachment to his father, castration anxiety, and an unconscious sense of guilt, Taylor proposes that a feminine identification informs all the disquieting aspects of Bellmer’s art.”

TAYLOR, S. (2000) Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Inside Flap:

“The Surrealists’ fascination for dolls and machines resembling humans is especially evident in the work of Bellmer. Rejecting the Nazi’s Aryan ideals, the artist began creating disturbing dolls from wax, wood, flax, plaster and glue in 1933. Photographs of these fetishistic objects were published in Minotaure, the Surrealists’ magazine, and Bellmer’s efforts were eagerly supported by members of Andre Breton’s circle. After emigrating to Paris, Bellmer further developed his erotic obsessions, influenced by the writings of Marquis de Sade and Georges Bastille, and it was there that he collaborated with his companion, the German artist Unica Zurn. Deeply involved in Freudian discourse, his drawings, lithographs and photographs investigate psychoanalytical theories around hysteria and transference, and reveal a singular exploration in the relationship between language and body.”

SEMFF, M. & SPIRA, A. (2006) Hans Bellmer. Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz