The Machine-Gunneress in a State of Grace
Bellmer began creating disturbing dolls in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany. Many have interpreted them as acts of political defiance against the Aryan ideals and social norms promoted by the Nazis, whom he openly opposed, and expressions of the personal outrage he felt towards his father, who had joined the Nazi party. Bellmer himself stated, "If the origin of my work is scandalous, it is because for me, the world is a scandal." Made in Berlin one year before the artist left for Paris, where he lived for the better part of the rest of his life, this figure is violently fragmented, its body parts splayed and truncated and its scale distorted. Connected mechanically by ball joints, its appendages offer endless perverse recombinations, made all the more unsettling by suggesting the physical traits of both a mature woman and a prepubescent girl.
