The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

The Doll

The Doll

1934
(German, 1902–1975)
Image: 7.8 x 11.8 cm (3 1/16 x 4 5/8 in.); Mounted: 12 x 16 cm (4 3/4 x 6 5/16 in.)
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Location: not on view

Description

Meeting a beautiful teenage cousin, seeing an opera where the hero falls in love with a female mechanical doll, and receiving a box of his childhood toys that included broken doll parts were among the influences that led Hans Bellmer to manufacture an "artificial girl." He photographed this unrealistic yet uncannily human, life-sized mannequin in poses varying from mundane, flirtatious, vulnerable, romantic, and erotic to radical re- and deconstructions of the human body. Working in Berlin as the Nazis rose to power, Bellmer created a vehicle for the erotic imagination that rekindled memories of childhood passions while prophesying some of the horrors to come.
  • Paul Hertzmann, San Francisco, CA
    2007
    David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Schaffner, Ingrid, Julien Levy, and Colin Westerbeck. Accommodations of Desire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected by Julien Levy. Pasadena, Calif: Curatorial Assistance, Inc, 2004. p. 75
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. cat. no.1, p. 3 & 90
  • Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
    Accommodations of Desire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected by Julien Levy. Palmer Museum of Art (September 14-December 5, 2004); McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, MA (January 16-March 27, 2005); Crocker Art Museum, Sacaramento, CA (July 9-September 11, 2005); Portland Museum of Art (January 1-March 19, 2006).
  • {{cite web|title=The Doll|url=false|author=Hans Bellmer|year=1934|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2007.27