Controversial for the challenging and oftentimes sexually graphic character of his work, Bellmer has often been criticized by feminist thinkers. Beginning with the recently hosted Double Sexus exhibition in Berlin, where his work was presented alongside that of Louise Bourgeois, and then examining his doll photographs and other works, I argue thatโfar from reifying gender normsโBellmer deconstructs the stability of the male ego.
Hans Bellmer is not for everyone. His work makes some people feel uncomfortableโsqueamish even. Actually, his work makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable. Despite this provocative character, however, Bellmer remains one of the most compelling and controversial artists of the 20 th century. Clearly, Bellmer takes such fantasies seriously.
Double Sexus , is an exhibition that brings together the work of Hans Bellmer with that of Louise Bourgeois. It was the first special exhibit hosted by the Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg since its founding in and was hosted from April to August of , before moving to the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. A German exile working in a predominantly French milieu, Bellmer expresses the differentiated view of Surrealism towards which the Collection aspires as well as its aesthetics of introversion and intimacy.
Bellmer is most famous for the doll he began making in Berlin in , and the two cycles of photographs of the posed doll, which were taken between and But these souvenirs of the doll,this doll-theme, was only the beginning of a prolific, forty-year career in which he produced not just photographs, but also etchings and writings. In order to give a clear and precise picture of this we will say: the body is comparable to a sentence that invites you to disarticulate it, for the purpose of recombining its actual contents through a series of endless anagrams.
Bellmer An image from his second cycle of photographs is representative of these themes see Figure 1. At once infantile and tumescent, its face is covered by its breast-like ball joints, and its eroticism is only emphasized by the chair-back, the blonde wig, and the ribbon.
