Bellmer hans biography for kids

According to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, when one is plagued by yearnings that sit somewhere in the realm of impropriety, those yearnings are often transferred from their original object or person of desire, to a more appropriate one. Freud’s displacement theory has been speculated to have been one of the major factors behind the creation of Hans Bellmer’s life-sized dolls in the mid-1930s, as well as the photography he subsequently produced with the inanimate animations as his erotically charged subjects.

Bellmer was born on March 13, 1902, in the city of Kattowitz in the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). His childhood was miserable, due to the inescapable presence of his strict and overbearing father. This instilled a deep loathing for authority in the young Hans and would later lead to his taking credit for provoking a physical crisis in his authoritarian parent.

Bellmer’s first doll, photographed and published in Die Puppe, 1934

Bellmer created his first doll in 1933, which he christened Die Puppe. Several significant events coalesced to be the force behind her creation, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned displacement theory. Bellmer had recently met his flirtatious fifteen-year-old cousin, Ursula, from whom he had to resist the whirlwind of attraction and infatuation that overtook his being. The Nazi’s fascist regime had also swept relentlessly over the country, and Bellmer, who was at the time working as a graphic designer, made a conscious decision not to create anything that could be used by the great propaganda machine. The other, perhaps lesser-known factor, that may have very well influenced the doll’s creation, has been widely surmised to have stemmed from Bellmer viewing a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s opéra fantastique, The Tales of Hoffman, in which the protagonist tells of a young man who has been severely mistreated by his father and falls deeply in love with a mechanical doll named Olympia. Additionally, Bellmer was also likely influenced by the writings of Austrian artist, poet, and playwright, Oskar Kokoschka – more specifically his 1925 collection of published letters, Der Fetisch, in which is detailed Kokoschka’s similar obsession with a mannequin, this one being created as a substitute for a former mistress.

Hans Bellmer, La Poupée (The Doll), 1935-36, painted wood, hair, socks and shoes, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Die Puppe was a prototype of sorts. She stood around fifty-six inches in height, and was constructed out of plant fibre, plaster, and glue for her exterior, with glass eyes and a disheveled wig. Her legs were fashioned from broomsticks and dowel rods, with only one being fully encased. Her stomach was also left open, and she was without arms. Seemingly unfinished, she didn’t possess the pliability that would come with the refinement of Bellmer’s newfound role as the modern Prometheus. And perhaps that is why she was left almost-limbless and rough-hewn – he may have realized she wasn’t going to be the absolute ideal he had in mind. Or perhaps it was simply a case of “close enough is good enough.”