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Hans Bellmer Die Puppe (The Doll)
John Baldessari Fable
Gerhardt Verlag, Berlin, 1962. First Edition. Octavo. Softcover
with stiff pictorial wrappers. One of 2000 numbered copies, of
which this is #1393. Light shelf wear to bottom and top edges,
else a Fine copy through and through.
When the Nazis gained power in 1933, with his father among
their keenest supporters, Bellmer announced that he would give
up all work that even indirectly could be useful to the State. He
began his new career as an artist by building a life-size Doll
(destr.) inspired by nostalgic memories of his secret garden and
by a production of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann;
it was designed to fulfil his need to escape from reality and to
arouse desires associated with the secret sexual encounters
of his adolescence. By its provocative eroticism it would strike
a blow against tyranny and authority. This first Doll, built with
the help of his brother from broom handles, metal rods, carved
wood and plaster of Paris, contained a small panorama enabling
scenes lit by a torch bulb to be seen through the navel. Bellmer
published ten photographs of this work as Die Puppe (Karlsruhe,
1934), accompanied by a short introduction in the form of an intricate
prose poem in which he clearly demonstrated how the
seemingly innocent games of the young child had developed into
the far from innocent sexual fantasies of the adult.
750
Anatol AV und Filmproduktion, Hamburg, 1977. 4x5” folded,
45x60” unfolded. Two concertina foldouts, one running vertically,
the other from left to right, thus forming a cross-like shape
when fully unfolded. Bound in original printed wrappers. Light
edgewear on some folds. Overall condition is Fine.
Upon 25 black and white photographs of television screens, Baldessari
has written in yellow a series of thirteen adjectives and
twelve verbs. The adjectives are to be read syntactically from left
to right, and are intersected by the vertical foldout of verbs, allowing
to viewer to substitute any one of the twelve verbs into the
sentence. By combining images and text, each as a referent for
the other within the context both of the individual frame and the
larger narrative they comprise, Baldessari playfully demonstrates
the narrative potential of images as well as the associative power
of language, eloquently dissecting the “fable” that images and
words, as symbols, have the power to create, both when taken individually
and in unison. Furthermore, the cruciform shape bears
harmony with the appropriated images of television screens,
suggesting the monumental elevation of images in contemporary
culture. These observations are further solidified as Baldessari
invites the viewer to construct their own narrative from the
selection of alternative verbs provided, creating a new layer of
dialogue between the work and the viewer while simultaneously
breaking down the artistic “fourth wall” that so often discourages
more than superficial interaction with a work.
5500