Hans Bellmer's Dolls — Transcript

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1. 0:00in this video we are discussing hans
2. 0:02bellmer
3. 0:03before we start i need to issue a very
4. 0:06strong content warning
5. 0:08this video discusses and contains
6. 0:10graphic imagery
7. 0:11related to physical and sexual violence
8. 0:14against women and girls
9. 0:17this is probably some of the most
10. 0:18graphic material that i teach
11. 0:21so i want to stress again here that this
12. 0:24may be quite triggering for some viewers
13. 0:29hans bellmer was a german artist of the
14. 0:311930s
15. 0:33who is often considered to be a
16. 0:35surrealist photographer
17. 0:37his images document the creation and
18. 0:39manipulation of multiple life-sized
19. 0:41mannequins
20. 0:42made to resemble women and adolescent
21. 0:45girls
22. 0:46he constructed his first doll as he
23. 0:48called them in 1933
24. 0:51inspired by a late 19th century novel
25. 0:53about a man who falls in love with a
26. 0:55lifelike
27. 0:56automaton while some may consider the
28. 0:59doll itself to be a piece of sculptural
29. 1:01art
30. 1:02it's through his photography that his
31. 1:04vision seems fully manifest
32. 1:07he positions his dolls in various poses
33. 1:10for the camera
34. 1:12sometimes quite remarkably lifelike as
35. 1:14in the young girl mannequin who appears
36. 1:17timidly perhaps anxiously over her
37. 1:19shoulder
38. 1:21but other times feels disjointed and
39. 1:24objectified
40. 1:25the photograph on the left for example
41. 1:28emphasizes the fragmentation of the body
42. 1:31with wooden chair parts comprising part
43. 1:33of the arm
44. 1:35sometimes as we see here bulmer comes
45. 1:38back
46. 1:38and hand retouches his black and white
47. 1:40prince with color
48. 1:42while adding a sort of modernist touch i
49. 1:44guess
50. 1:45i would argue it also often heightens
51. 1:48the implied violence of the scene
52. 1:50particularly with his frequent use of
53. 1:52red suggesting blood
54. 1:54and physical trauma in 1934
55. 1:58bellmer anonymously and privately
56. 2:00published the book the doll
57. 2:02in germany containing 10 black and white
58. 2:05arranged photographs
59. 2:08although receiving little attention in
60. 2:09germany the images reached the eyes of
61. 2:12the surrealists in france
62. 2:14among whom their subversive content made
63. 2:17quite an impression
64. 2:19indeed belmer's art shared much with
65. 2:21surrealism
66. 2:23it was intended to function as a
67. 2:24cathartic release of his private desires
68. 2:27and anxieties
69. 2:29later that same year the surrealist
70. 2:31journal the minotaur
71. 2:32published 18 of belmer's photographs for
72. 2:35their readers
73. 2:37then in 1938 the nazi party declared
74. 2:40belmer's work
75. 2:41along with many of his peers to be
76. 2:44degenerate
77. 2:45soon thereafter political pressure and
78. 2:48the threat of violence
79. 2:49forced him to flee germany to france
80. 2:52where he found refuge among the
81. 2:53surrealists
82. 2:55so i'm just gonna lay out all my cards
83. 2:58on the table here
84. 2:59and tell you that i really dislike
85. 3:02belmer's art
86. 3:04so i'll get to why in a moment if it's
87. 3:07not already obvious maybe from the
88. 3:09images themselves
89. 3:10but i'm first going to try to lay out
90. 3:13the argument or interpretation
91. 3:16that is sometimes published in his
92. 3:18defense
93. 3:20all right so taking into account his
94. 3:23political persecution
95. 3:24at the hands of the nazi party some art
96. 3:27historians have
97. 3:28framed his photographs as anti-fascist
98. 3:32in nature so i'm sure many of you are
99. 3:35asking yourselves
100. 3:36how how is this anti-fascist well
101. 3:39the visual culture of the nazi party was
102. 3:42predicated
103. 3:43on the celebration of ostensibly
104. 3:45pristine
105. 3:46complete conventionally idealized aryan
106. 3:49bodies
107. 3:51as in the intro scenes for director
108. 3:53linny riefenstahl's
109. 3:55fascist film olympia which spectacularly
110. 3:58glorified
111. 3:59the so-called nazi olympics of 1936
112. 4:04fascist propaganda often featured naked
113. 4:06white german bodies
114. 4:08positioned as if to recall greek and
115. 4:10roman statues
116. 4:13whereas riefenstahl's olympia features
117. 4:15the body resplendent
118. 4:17exalted bellmer depicts the human form
119. 4:20as base grotesque even
120. 4:24through his pictorial dismantling of the
121. 4:26body
122. 4:27some have characterized his work as a
123. 4:29reflection of the depravity of the
124. 4:31modern world
125. 4:33and as an attack on fascist idealization
126. 4:37okay so on the one hand we do know that
127. 4:40bulmer played a practical role
128. 4:42in later french resistance to the nazi
129. 4:45invasion
130. 4:46making fake passports for which he was
131. 4:48later imprisoned
132. 4:50so he did face real persecution on the
133. 4:53other hand
134. 4:54what are we really saying that
135. 4:57the best way to fight against fascism in
136. 5:00art is to make
137. 5:01images that seem to depict physical and
138. 5:04sexual violence against women and girls
139. 5:07is that really what we're saying okay
140. 5:10so before turning to the next slide i
141. 5:12want to re-emphasize once again
142. 5:15that we are going to be delving into
143. 5:17some really upsetting territory here
144. 5:20if you haven't already which i hope you
145. 5:22have please ensure
146. 5:24that no children are present upon
147. 5:26viewing the next slide
148. 5:28and if this seems like it may be too
149. 5:30triggering
150. 5:31please be kind to yourselves rather than
151. 5:34positioning belmer
152. 5:35as some kind of hero fighter against
153. 5:38fascism
154. 5:39i want to suggest an alternative context
155. 5:42during the interwar years the years
156. 5:44between the first and second world war
157. 5:47german artists produced a large number
158. 5:50of artworks on the theme of lustmord
159. 5:53which translates to sex murder some of
160. 5:56the artists who produced these images
161. 5:58like otto dix and george gross
162. 6:01continue to this day to be held up by
163. 6:03society as avant-garde heroes of the
164. 6:05modern age
165. 6:07cherished emblems of modern art although
166. 6:10their names may be familiar to some of
167. 6:12you
168. 6:13i imagine that these images are not
169. 6:16as they are often little disgust and
170. 6:19de-emphasized in favor of their more
171. 6:21socially acceptable
172. 6:23anti-war imagery the impressionist
173. 6:25artist edgar degas
174. 6:27once compared painting someone to a
175. 6:29transgression
176. 6:31to committing a crime since the days of
177. 6:34the classical era
178. 6:35art making has been metaphorically
179. 6:37compared to
180. 6:38sex to procreation this was always
181. 6:41described in highly gendered
182. 6:43terms with the paintbrush metaphorically
183. 6:45standing in for the phallus
184. 6:48within loose tomorrow paintings the
185. 6:50pygmalion fantasy
186. 6:52has gone dark art making is not
187. 6:54procreation
188. 6:55but sexual violence art historians have
189. 6:58gone to lengths
190. 6:59to ignore and explain this stuff
191. 7:03sought to understand this trend as a
192. 7:05manifestation of the artist's first-hand
193. 7:08experience of the carnage of the first
194. 7:10world war
195. 7:12however it's fair to say that both dicks
196. 7:14and gross
197. 7:15held some pretty misogynistic views of
198. 7:17women
199. 7:18even for their day george gross wrote in
200. 7:21a letter for example quote
201. 7:23i could give a [ __ ] about depth in women
202. 7:27usually that means they suffer from
203. 7:28repulsive excess of male characteristics
204. 7:32in this matter i am in agreement with
205. 7:34kerr the critic
206. 7:35that i'm the only one with a mind
207. 7:38for his part otto dix once expressed
208. 7:41that he painted his loosed-moored scenes
209. 7:43in an effort to control his actual
210. 7:46desires to kill women
211. 7:48feminist art historians like utte
212. 7:51tellini
213. 7:52have argued that these images were in
214. 7:54fact a backlash
215. 7:55conscious or otherwise against growing
216. 7:58inter-war feminism
217. 8:00during the first world war more and more
218. 8:02women entered the professional sphere
219. 8:05women found newfound independence
220. 8:07education access to birth control
221. 8:09and greater social visibility like with
222. 8:12the 19th century image of the beautiful
223. 8:14dying woman
224. 8:15and the femme fatale lustmord was a
225. 8:18visual rejoiner
226. 8:20to women's fight for rights like the
227. 8:23loosed moored scenes made by gross and
228. 8:25dicks
229. 8:26some of bilmer's doll photographs
230. 8:28contain imagery that seems to directly
231. 8:30call on sexualized killings
232. 8:33like those of jack the ripper or the
233. 8:35camden town murderer
234. 8:37killings that were frequently splashed
235. 8:39and sensationalized
236. 8:40on the front pages of newspapers
237. 8:43in this hand-colored photograph from
238. 8:451935
239. 8:46bellmer positions a dark figure looming
240. 8:49in the background
241. 8:50a murderer dismantler a stand-in perhaps
242. 8:54for the artist or the viewer whose
243. 8:56victim in this case
244. 8:58is literally all body no mind
245. 9:01no agency now i would
246. 9:04love for someone to explain to me how
247. 9:06this photograph fights fascism
248. 9:09honestly i wish i didn't have to teach
249. 9:12this material
250. 9:13but the thing is belmer's work continues
251. 9:17to be celebrated in museums
252. 9:19shared on social media etc under the
253. 9:22guise of heroism
254. 9:24to be clear i'm okay with belmer's art
255. 9:27being talked about
256. 9:29my problem is the way in which it is
257. 9:31sometimes celebrated uncritically
258. 9:34putting it in the words of the late
259. 9:36feminist art historian linda knocklen
260. 9:38quote why must transgression social and
261. 9:41artistic alike
262. 9:42always be enacted on the naked bodies of
263. 9:45women
264. 9:47in conclusion hans bellmer is a german
265. 9:49photographer
266. 9:50associated with the surrealist movement
267. 9:52in france
268. 9:54the photographs which feature his
269. 9:56life-size mannequins
270. 9:57appear to depict scenes of physical and
271. 10:00sexual violence against women and girls
272. 10:04some art historians have argued that his
273. 10:06work keenly represents the depravity of
274. 10:08the modern condition
275. 10:10and that it heroically resists fascist
276. 10:12idealization of the body
277. 10:14other art historians have questioned
278. 10:16whether the ends justify the means here
279. 10:19does anti-fascist art necessitate
280. 10:21somehow
281. 10:22the violent objectification of women
282. 10:26of course you all are welcome to make
283. 10:28your own decisions here
284. 10:29but it seems like a stretch to me
285. 10:32instead
286. 10:33i would position belmer's imagery within
287. 10:35the context of german
288. 10:37loosedmort art which arose in the wake
289. 10:39of the first world war
290. 10:41and which operated in apparent
291. 10:43opposition to the rise of feminist
292. 10:45advances
293. 10:46of the interwar years