BELLMER, HANS. La Poupée. Translated by Robert Valencay. With 10 silver prints of Bellmer's doll in various poses, mounted on card and bound in as issued, each measuring 4 1/2x3 inches. 8vo, printed tan dust jacket with flaps glued to plain stiff wrappers, rose-tinted endpapers and text pages. Roth 88; Parr/Badger I 106; Hasselblad 120; Auer 235. one of 100 copies. (Paris): (G.L.M.), 1936
Originally published in Germany in 1934 as 'Die Puppe' [The Doll], Hans Bellmer's 'La Poupée' (1936) is a Surrealist interpretation of the femme-enfant complex. The ten silver print photographs depict a life-size female mannequin conceived by Bellmer and custom-crafted from wood, flax fiber, plaster, and glue. The mannequin, who appears in each of the photographs, is arranged at odd angles, with twisted limbs, to convey the adolescent female as both seductress and victim. Bellmer treated the female automata as both an animate and inanimate figure, simultaneously objectifying and personalizing the doll. Indeed, some of the images show "her" as a specimen with whom he shared an erotic connection.
A masterwork of the photobook genre, 'La Poupée' was designed with a direct purpose. The pink endpapers in the French edition subtly evoke the tenderness of the young female form, while its small-format binding encourages notions of privacy and special intimacies. The book includes a printed drawing by the artist, who was a superb draftsman.
During the Nazi period, Bellmer's artwork found greater recognition at the same time that the National Socialist Party was seizing more power and authority. His bizarre drawings and photographs of the female body increasingly conveyed a grotesque manipulation and dismemberment of the human body that reflects Nazi brutalities. Ultimately, Bellmer fled Germany for Paris, where, for a time, he worked freely amongst other Surrealist artists outside the confines of a repressive regime.
