The Wandering Libido and The Hysterical Body

‘The images show Bellmer’s assemblage, made of wood, flax fiber, plaster, and glue, under construction in his studio or arrayed on a bare mattress or lacy cloth. Seductive props sometimes accompany the doll-a black veil, eyelet undergarments, an artificial rose. Naked or, in one case, wearing only a cotton undershirt, the armless doll is variously presented as a skeletal automaton, a coy adolescent, or an abject pile of discombobulated parts.’

- Images: Hans Bellmer, La Poupée.

‘Bellmer depicted the body as an amalgamation of the organic and inorganic, transgressing its normative limits to incorporate aspects of its environment. He fantasized the body as a series of shifting, interchangeable erogenous zones, subject to the forces of psychic repression in what he termed “the physical unconscious.”‘

1. The Very Last Resort – Trentemøller

 2. An Echo, A Stain – Björk

3. What Your Soul Sings – Massive Attack

4. Semen Song for James Bidgood – Matmos

‘This image of male sexual curiosity and domination is in a sense emblematic of Bellmer’s entire oeuvre: the hapless female body, deprived of head and limbs, is scrutinized and manipulated, and its inner workings exposed in a cut-away view.’

- Sue Taylor, Hans Bellmer in The Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body