Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer , born the March 13rd 1902 with Katowice and dead the February 23rd 1975 with Paris of a cancer of the bladder, is a painter, Photographe, engraver, Dessinateur and German Sculpteur having practically always worked in France. He was one of the major figures of the Surréalisme.

With the come to power of the Nazi S in 1933, Bellmer decided more anything to make which can be useful for the State Nazi. It then made, in 1934, its most known work: the Headstock .

the Headstock

It is a sculpture representing in the quasi-real face (1,40 m) a multiform young girl, with the dark hair, cut in fringe on the face, decorated on the top of the head by a great stiff node, only vêtue of white socks and black varnish escarpins, a large headstock made up of many members being able to be articulated the ones with the others by balls, a large ball, the belly, on which can articulate two more stomachs, four hips articulated with the four thighs, those articulated with the four legs, and a bust with several centres, the removable head and the neck. Hans Bellmer plays with her Poupée and multiplies the variations with the various elements of her body; sometimes, for example, amputated with the knees, the head, decapitated, posed behind of the two balls of the hips appearing young tree; or, another example, become monster with four legs, two in top, two bellow, articulated with the ball central of the belly, mobile and suggesting the dance and the provocation of the desire of others, photographed here in wood, there on a parquet floor, in an attic, vautrée twisted on a mattress, two legs equipped with black pants of man; or with half dismantled, amputated by a leg, thrown in a sleeping bag, ruffled by its fall and its weight. The photographs were polychrome, Bellmer colored them colors changeantes on the same photograph, sometimes pastel, flesh, pale pink, pink more supported, mauve, light blue, but also of bright colors, red, yellow, blue duck. The Poupée is erotic, it is a “artificial creature with the multiple anatomical potentialities”, by which Bellmer intends to discover the “mechanics of the desire” and to uncover “the physical Inconscient” which controls us; it is childish, but also victim of sadistic perversions; thus dismembered, forced, violated, it corresponds to the desire of the artist to see the woman reaching “the level of its experimental vocation”.

Bellmer was obviously decried by the Third Reich, its art was described as “degenerated”, and finally it is well there what he wanted: to cause the population to lead it to awake.

The woman according to the artist would be like an anagram. The photographs of the headstock will allure the surrealist ones in Paris which will decide to publish them in the Minotaure review. Consequently, he will be an important member of Parisian surrealism and is established in France since 1938 until his death in 1975. During the second world war, Hans Bellmer takes refuge in clandestinity not having had the possibility, like others, to exile itself with the the United States. Following a control of the French police force, Bellmer was imprisoned with the Camp of the Miles close to Marseilles until 1940 in company of max Ernst, Springer and Wols. In 1949, it constitutes the second Headstock, and publishes the photographs in a work entitled the Jeux of the headstock accompanied by a poem of Paul Éluard. The whole of these photographs are painted with aniline by his/her friend Christian d' Orgeix and itself. Bellmer publishes a text-treaty into 1957 which intends to testify to its step and which is entitled Petite anatomy of the unconscious physique or small anatomy of the image . His last Wife, Unica Zürn, will work at her sides the plastic anagram until 1975, date of her death.

Range of work

The work of Bellmer, often associated by a psychoanalytical drift with the vocabulary of perversion, remains a poetic assertion of surrealism in what it has of purer. Relative proximity that the photographs maintain the Headstock with Unheimliche freudien place this work at the border between the erotism and death, between animated and the inanimate one. The body of the headstock, but also the drawings and engravings express oneiric universes in which the conciliation of the opposites is possible in accordance with Proclamation of the surrealism of Breton. Bellmer will illustrate also the Marquis of Sade, Georges Bataille, Lautréamont etc

Bellmer continued then its work on the erotism with many drawings and engravings.

Bellmer was influenced in the choice of the form of its art by the reading of letters published of Oskar Kokoschka ( Der Fetish , 1925).

Appendices

In the video game Silent Hill 2, one of the monsters prénommant “Mannequin” carries a very strong resemblance to the Headstock of Bellmer, indeed like it, the monster comprises two legs instead of its two arms, a possible deliberated reference

One finds clear references to the headstock of Bellmer in the Cartoon film Japanese Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2.

References

Hans Bellmer. Small anatomy of the image (2002, Éditions Combined, Paris).
Hans Bellmer: Anatomy of the Desire (2006, Gallimard Editions/Center Pompidou).
Pierre Dourthe. Hans Bellmer: The Principle of Perversion . (1999, France).

External bonds

Hans Bellmer and the unheimliche by Fabrice Flahutez
Hans Bellmer in Artcyclopedia

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