The French Surrealists embraced Bellmer’s work with
a genuine enthusiasm that would encourage him to expand
on what he had accomplished with Die Puppe, his first Doll.
Though Bellmer found validation from the surrealists, his
ideas for sex-dolls did not find its roots in the movement.
Bellmer’s explicit drawings may not have been inspired
by Dadaist George Grosz, but they were very much
informed by the economic and elegant line quality in
Grosz’s drawings. The simplistic elegance learned from
Grosz, combined with the unnerving imagery is part of
what gave Bellmer’s illustration work such a sexually
confusing quality. Was this erotic art or not? What are
we to feel of a drawing of a girl, fully nude, tearing open
her skin to reveal her intestines?

Detractors of “Rose Ouverte la Nuit” (far right) should be
reminded of Renaissance anatomy illustrations (left) where
“living” subjects also demonstrate their anatomy. Both are
a far cry from today’s generic nude medical illustrations.
Intent, of course, plays a strong role; and Bellmer intended
for his art to be erotic, violent, forbidden and forgiving.
Like the Renaissance medical drawings, Bellmer’s work
was to demonstrate, not surrealism, but hyper-reality.

While Bellmer’s illustration quality took its cue from George Grosz, the life-size dolls that evolved from his drawings had multiple sources of inspiration. The initial spark came from a story told by wax doll maker, Lotte Pritzel. She told Hans about the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who asked her to build a life size doll that would function as a surrogate for female companionship. This story perhaps validated Bellmer’s own fantasies for a sex object that would channel both present desires and past memories. Kokoschka’s request foreshadowed the opera “The Tales of Hoffmann” where a man unwittingly falls in love with a lifeless doll. Both Kokoschka’s story and the opera were the deciding factors for Hans, who as of 1933, would begin to design erotic, recombinant “artificial girls with anatomical possibilities.”

“Anatomical Possibilities”. Those words bring to mind pornographic paraphernalia for sexual experimentation. Does this qualify Bellmer’s dolls as pornography? While pornography is hedonistic, Bellmer’s dolls are strangely intellectually hedonistic; going beyond the blind appetite of pornography. Sexual awareness is only the first layer. Beneath that is the enigmatic layer that Bellmer called the “Physical Unconscious”. That is, “the body’s underlying awareness of itself.” There is more humanity in his work than one might think. Especially when we concede that “humanity” is defined not just by our occasional civility, but also our need for cruelty. Censorship is merely our way of reconciling the two. Like Jenny Holzer’s “Lustmord”, a German word whose loose English translation means “Sex-Murder,” Bellmer’s dolls speak of lust, surrender and aggression. As one French critic described, “(Han’s doll) looks like a police document after the discovery of a dismembered trunk victim.”

The quixotic “possibilities” of anatomy explored by Hans Bellmer may have grabbed the attention of the Surrealist movement, but maybe this didn’t quite qualify him as a surrealist. There is something very real about the dolls. They are real world embodiments of private desires made public. The forbidden arousal elicited by Bellmer’s dolls, though validated by surrealism, belong to the here and now. The excuse of mythic reality does not exempt you from your body’s instinctive desires as it is seduced by his drawings and his dolls. This may very well be why Bellmer’s work still struggles with finding mainstream acceptance. No doubt, Bellmer would have appreciated seeing his work understood outside of the geographic range of the Surrealist Movement. In the excellent book, Death, Desire and the Doll by Peter Webb we are offered anecdotal interviews with the author, where Bellmer asserts his work against the label of pornography. Should the mainstream continue to look past Bellmer’s work, insisting on pornographic projections, than Bellmer has already left behind his closing rebuttal: “If my work is scandalous, it is because the world is a scandal.”