A Psychoanalytic Comparison of Hans Bellmer’s Art to the Immortality, Object Possession, and the Depravities of the Non-Human Self
“Any loss of nonhuman support is akin to a mutilation of the body, as if one were dismembered. In such a regression, the annihilation of the human self is escaped through a merger with the enduring constancy of things [ie: objects], and with the associated resurrection of the nonhuman self. The loss of human connection is death’s penultimate moment.” ~Sue Grand, The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical & Cultural Perspective, pg.128
If we consider this quote from Sue Grand and compare the relationship Hans Bellmer had with his father, we can begin to understand the relational forces that influenced his artwork.
According to Hans Bellmer, he had a complex and strained relationship with his father. His father never let him or his brother the freedom of free play. According to Hans Bellmer, his father was a serious man who did not indulge the children in any kind of play or affection. A humorless man in 1933, his father was a staunch Nazi during Nazi occupation and Bellmer decided to cut ties with him.
Bellmer’s uncanny, fragmented disarticulations, and sexually explicit positioning of the female body can be seen as Bellmer’s resurrection of the nonhuman father through a merger with Objects. Namely, the female body.
“The faulty identification with the father — the subject wanting to become God — involves faulty sublimation (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984, pg. 22)”
Remember Sue Grand suggests that “any loss of nonhuman support is akin to the mutilation of the body, as if one were dismembered.” Bellmer certainly expresses this theme in his art. With enduring constancy with objects (dismembered dolls), Bellmer was able to recreate his relationship, and identify with, his father through the resurrection of the nonhuman, his dolls. The loss of human connection is death’s penultimate moment. Here, we unearth a possible relational surrogacy in his creating and recreating dismembered objects. Is he constantly resurrecting his relationship with his father through these dolls, and so too, a part of himself? His themes surround control, manipulation, and deviant defiance.
“Inevitably, human-to-human encounters threaten the survivor with the memory of his own annihilation. In such moments, the greed of the nonhuman self escalates in proportion to the resurgence of dread (Grand, 2000, pg. 129).”
Is this what happened during his relationship with Unica Zern which created his 1958 artwork “Unica Bound” and “A Sade” in 1961? His last works were viewed as by Bellmer himself as;
“An orgy of fantasies, projections, substitutions, displacements, even hallucinations (Blind Dweller, July 21, 2024).”
In his work “A Sade” (1961) Bellmer’s work was reaching dangerous proportions. His themes explored sexual violence and psychological manipulation and the relationship between power and pleasure. To Bellmer, anatomy was desire in itself rather than a representation of it. Bellmer said;
“A man in love with a woman was a hermaphrodite and his obsessive desire was essentially to merge and be one with her.”
In essence, that sexual desire was to merge male and female together and become this one phantastical beast.
“Sex, the beast with two backs.” ~William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1, Scene 1
In “A Sade” (1961), the series expressed depersonalization and raw images that were seemingly unapologetic. Did he consciously or unconsciously ultimately facilitate, through control and power, the suicide of Unica Zern? Much like a vulnerable little girl doll, this mentally ill woman was probably easy to manipulate.
Sources:
Grand, Sue. (2000). “The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective.” Hillside, NJ. The Analytic Press. Chapter 6, The Depravities of the Nonhuman Self: Greed, Murder, Persecution, pgs. 115–134.
Blind Dweller. “The Disturbing Desires of Hans Bellmer.” YouTube.com. Published July 21, 2024. Retrieved August 27, 2024.
Smirgel, Janine Chasseguet. (1984). “Creativity and Perversion.” London. Free Association Books. Chapter 2, Perversion as Exemplified by Three Luciferian Characters, pgs. 20–23.
