February 21, 2004
Surrealism & sexuality#5
It's odd isn't it. In 1941 Surrealism was declared dead and has been described as such in all the conventional art history books since that time. Abstract modernism became identified with modernism in the art institution.
Surrealism was seen as one of the most vilified and degraded forms of cultural and artistic expression. It was banished.
An example?
Hans Bellmer, The Doll(1935)
So the work of Hans Bellmer, with his manipulated female dolls, bondage tricks and photos of women fingering themselves as they stood, hitching their skirts up, over open toilet bowls, has been regarded as beyond the pale.
And now? We can interpret Bellmer's the work from Bataille's perspective: in a nihilist world we different kind of socio-sexual disturbance and confusion about bodies, power, sexuality, fragmentation and otherness.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 21, 2004 07:18 PM | TrackBack