Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (California Studies in the History of Art Discovery Series)
by Therese Lichtenstein
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Book Summary Information
Author: Therese LichtensteinEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04-03
ISBN: 0520209842
Number of pages: 266
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (California Studies in the History of Art Discovery Series)
Book Review: Beautiful.
Summary: 4 Stars
Therese Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (University of California Press, 2003)
If you are aware of Hans Bellmer, you probably don't need this review. If you are not aware of Hans Bellmer, you're probably not reading this review. So... fish!A blowdryer. Seven kinds of candy and a needle threaded with bullion stitching together tree limbs in the desert.
Lichtenstein does a fine job of deconstructing Bellmer, not only focusing on his subversion of Nazi ideology (ground already well-trod in art criticism), but pulling in biographical data to give a clearer understanding of what forces drove Bellmer to create life-sized dolls, assemble the pieces in odd ways, and then photograph them hundreds of times with only the smallest changes in position. Her essay is clear, readable, excellent. The book's main problem is that, well, for an art book, there's not terribly much art. More pictures, please! (Especially the drawings, a side of Bellmer's art seen all too rarely.) What art there is is reproduced well, though that's to be expected from an art book, wot? The book also uses the annoying, but increasingly common, convention of end-of-the-book endnotes instead of footnotes (or even end-of-the-chapter notes, annoying but not as much so). Stopping every half-page or so to flip to the back of the book makes for not-so-happy readers.
Still, a fine work on a sadly neglected artist. Worth your time. ****
Summary of Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (California Studies in the History of Art Discovery Series)
The life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s are the subject of Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book. Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls-with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poses-were just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text.Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise, Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque-often sexual-positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence.
Lichtenstein interprets Bellmer's complex expressions of eroticism as a protest against the Nazis and also against his father, a cold and repressive Nazi sympathizer. At the same time, she says, by hyperbolically flaunting a passive femininity in a theatrical manner, Bellmer's images allow us to consider how cultural representations can affect the formation of identity and alternative possibilities.
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