Hans Bellmer: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Bellmer
introduction to André Breton in Paris in 1935 solidified his inclusion in a
group exhibition at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins and launched his membership
in the surrealist circle. In March, he was back in Berlin (Taylor, 2000, p.70).
The Nazi persecution of avant-garde artists is well known, but it is important
to realize that Bellmer’s mentors and closest associates in Berlin in the 1920s
were among those now targeted for public abuse—Otto Dix, George Grosz, “The Jew
Wieland Herzfelde” (Taylor, 2000, p. 71). This oppressive environment would influence
his work. His dolls were the objectification of women and society. There is the
loss of freedom: the castration effect. In the dolls is a look of pubescence
and innocence. These are just “games” that the dolls play, according to Bellmer.
Bellmer’s Poupée
in Hayloft c. 1935-1936, is a photograph of a scene where the doll
is playing a “game” where the figure is two sets of life-size women's legs and
pelvises joined together in a scene of what looks to be sexually violent. Bellmer
applied tint to depict bruises, showing the scene as one of sexual assault (Taylor,
2000, p.77). The form is sexualized, and while battered, it exudes a sense of sexual
invitation. The form is spread out in what could be viewed as a swastika, which
is protesting the Nazi Regime and his Nazi-loving father (Taylor, 2000, p.77).
The photograph was taken at his family home, in what he described as the “wretched
house,” in a prose poem called “Father” (Taylor, 2000, p.77). Bellmer created an
art piece with many layers. His trauma is being redirected into a violation
scene, violating the viewer. He is a sadist who wants to make the viewer, which
was often his father, uncomfortable.
Let's explore
Bellmer’s Poupée in Hayloft from a psychoanalytical viewpoint to see if
we can understand the layers of this scene of depravity. For one, Bellmer was
associated with the Surrealist movement, and they were fascinated with the
uncanny experience of the doubling effect of automation and mannequins. Freud defined the
uncanny as an experience that revives infantile complexes that have been
repressed, like castration (Week 6, pt. two Modernism). The photograph is very
phallic, with multiple legs and no torso, arms, or head. It can be argued that
these dolls were used as political statements towards the idealized whole and
complete Arian body, which he violated (Chandler, 2011, p.32). Bellmer wanted
to anger his father, and besides the art, he would cross-dress in public to embarrass
him. He knew powerful, subversive effects could be achieved through manipulated
images of girlhood and constructed performative gender roles (Chandler, 2011,
p.32). It must be noted that Bellmer saw the Nazi regime as an oppressive
father figure. Bellmer was obsessed with the castrated female, and turning its
form and likeness into a doll played into his deep insecurities with his
father. I would argue that Bellmer saw himself as the mutilated doll and the
viewer as his father. Bellmer picked the environment for the Poupée scene in
Hayloft at one of his childhood homes. He could have picked any hayloft or even
constructed a space to look like one, but he used his childhood home to connect
to his father. This could be viewed as an incestuous assault against his
father.
Sublimination is a
term coined by Freud that describes the origin of creativity as driven by
sexual, libidinal, and often aggressive instincts directed toward an object or
person (Adams, 2018, p.216). Bellmer was regressing to his fear of castration from
his phallic stage of development from his youth, and his father was the object he
retaliated against. (Adams, 2018, p.217). His fear of loss was a wound that
festered. In his mind, what better form to unleash his creative anguish upon
than the original wound, the castrated female? Bellmer was a victim of a
negative Oedipus complex. Bellmer identifies with his mother and wishes to be
the passive love object of his father. It can be argued that the positive and
negative constellations operate dynamically, and when the positive
predominates, the boy becomes heterosexual vs.; when the negative prevails, the
outcome is a homosexual one (Adams, 2018, p.217). So, by creating this violent
but also slightly inviting display of female doll flesh, Bellmer explores his
negative Oedipus Complex.
Environment and location were important to
the composition of the photograph. Bellmer liked to depict his scenes of violence
and depravity in domestic settings.” These settings present a clandestine,
malevolent world in which the doll is variously bound, beaten, tied to a tree, hung
on a hook, or taken apart and strewn on a stairway” (Taylor, 2000, p.74). He
focuses on the destruction of girlhood innocence, which mirrored his own.
Bellmer eroticizes the rage displayed in the photograph. The castration effect
is on account of his fear of abandonment. Bellmer understood that his work
reflected this and that he was a sadomasochist. Bellmer discusses this in “Memories
of the Doll Theme,” the essay published with photographs of the first doll in
Die Puppe in 1934:
“Would it not be the final triumph over those
adolescents with wide eyes which turn Part Sadomasochism, Castration Anxiety,
and the Ball-Jointed Doll away if, beneath the conscious stare that plunders
their charms, aggressive fingers were to assault their plastic form and slowly
construct, limb by limb, all that had been appropriated by the senses and the
brain? Adjust their joints one to the other, arrange childlike poses by using
ball joints to their fullest extent, follow very gently the contours of the
hollows, taste the pleasure of the curves, wander in the labyrinths of the
ears, make everything pretty, and ruthlessly spill the salt of deformation. . .
. Should not that be the solution?” (Qtd. in Taylor, 2000, p.85).
In
a Freudian view, this beating fantasy originates in incestuous attachment to
the father. Bellmer’s hatred for his father and fear of physical and emotional
abandonment are channeled through the repetitious beating and violation of his
dolls. Even though the dolls appear battered and abused, there still is a sense
of invitation.
If Bellmer didn’t have an artistic creative
outlet to channel his aggression, he probably would have been a sexual predator
and murderer. He knew he had a sadistic side. He even stated this to his long-time
lover and companion Unica Zürn, “that if he did not draw young girls so much, he
might have resorted to sex murder” (Taylor, 2000, pp.91-92). Bellmer claimed to
thwart his sadistic sexual impulses through his art. While his art was
brilliant at making the viewer, his father, and Nazis uncomfortable while creating
something that is aesthetically interesting, he had some very serious mental
health issues. I am glad that he had an outlet because I would imagine that without
art, he probably would have been a serial killer.
Adams, L. S. (2018). The Methodologies of Art (2nd ed.).
Taylor & Francis. https://tiffin-bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780429974076
CHANDLER, M. (2011). Grrrls and Dolls: Appropriated Images of Girlhood in the Works of Hans Bellmer and Riot Grrrl Bands. Visual Culture & Gender, 6, 30–39.
Taylor, S. (2000). Hans Bellmer : The Anatomy of Anxiety. The MIT Press.
Tiffin University. (2023). Week Six Course Notes: Part Two Modernism. ART624.https://online.tiffin.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=1443970&chapterid=4855Notes:Part2 Modernism (tiffin.edu)
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