Untitled (Variations around La Poupée) 1934

Curator: This drawing by Hans Bellmer, dating from 1934, is part of his "Variations around La Poupée" series. It's rendered in pencil, using line and shading to depict what seems to be…a rather unsettling figure. Editor: Unsettling is the word! It feels like a dream, or maybe a nightmare. A fragmented figure, dismembered, reassembled… all soft pencil strokes and blurry forms. It's oddly… compelling, despite its disquieting mood. Curator: Absolutely. Bellmer was deeply involved with Surrealism, and this work definitely embodies its exploration of the unconscious. The doll, or 'poupée' in French, becomes a canvas for him to express ideas around sexuality, the body, and its potential for reconfiguration. Editor: Yes, the fragmented doll. Dolls often appear in art as symbols of childhood, innocence even. But here, Bellmer twists that on its head. The image radiates something far more complex. Almost a feeling of suppressed anxiety or hidden desire struggling to surface. It’s the juxtaposition of familiar form with distorted arrangements that catches the eye. The motifs of bare feet, truncated dress patterns and a hanging door-knocker imply that these fragmented figures represent an array of psychological concerns. Curator: The lack of color almost intensifies the feeling, right? The grayscale really pushes you towards those lines and how they form and deform the figure. Notice, also, how Bellmer plays with the doll as both object and subject. It has a will but also appears devoid of interiority. Editor: And those floating feet… Are they severed? Or merely suggesting movement? Everything's so ambiguous. It reminds me of certain archetypal images, the Magna Mater figures that depict the birth of civilization from a single god and many human forms. Even that solitary door-knocker above seems charged with meaning, almost like a disembodied third eye peering down. Curator: Indeed. It really makes you consider what lurks beneath the surface of the human psyche, doesn’t it? Thanks for taking me on that little associative leap; I love that this work keeps whispering even after you've walked away. Editor: Me too. A sketch can capture something so primal, so immediate. I think it’s fair to say this artwork leaves a lingering disquiet in a person's soul that few ever manage to articulate.