The psychological and political implications of Hans Bellmer's dolls in the cultural and social context of Germany and France in the 1930s.
Item
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Title
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The psychological and political implications of Hans Bellmer's dolls in the cultural and social context of Germany and France in the 1930s.
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Identifier
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AAI9306141
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identifier
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9306141
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Creator
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Lichtenstein, Therese Ellen.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Linda Nochlin
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Women's Studies | Biography | Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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My dissertation focuses on Hans Bellmer's photographs and drawings of the young adolescent girl/doll he constructed in the 1930s, examining their complex position between two cultural, political, and social contexts of France and Nazi Germany.;Although Bellmer's work shares iconographic and conceptual affinities with some of the Surrealist photographers, its relationship to the political and cultural conditions inside Nazi Germany, where Bellmer lived until his wife's death in 1938, has been virtually ignored by art historians. It is certainly not a coincidence that the birth of Bellmer's adolescent girl/doll and the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich occurred during the same year--1933.;In Nazi Germany the acts of colonizing, possessing and systematically destroying the "Other"--Jews, modern artists, the insane and the left-wing intelligentsia--began by the strategic construction of the category of degenerate "Otherness." By creating a comparative discourse between the acceptable, normal Nazi culture and the unacceptable, degenerate Other, the National Socialists could better substantiate, legitimize and communicate their pseudo-scientific eugenics based race theory. The human body frequently displayed in mass-spectacles--parades, films and art exhibitions--became the site on which the acceptable and unacceptable discourses were articulated.;It is my contention that the young adolescent dolls that Bellmer constructed were in part a complex response to the rise of Fascism. Bellmer's works are a violent attack on the stereotypes of normalcy found in Nazi Art and culture. The contextualization of Bellmer's work within Nazi Germany will also increase our understanding of the heterogeneous roles of woman in Surrealism.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
