How many times have you endured some melodramatic doll painting representing the artist’s precious suffering and overwhelming mediocrity? Remember the art teacher’s video art in Ghost World? How about a Rasputina CD cover? The use of the doll in art has been seriously marred by weepy-eyed nostalgic Victorian aesthetics. Please dry your eyes with these Dada & Surrealism inspired Doll artists:
Hans Bellmer. – German Surrealist Bellmer would construct his waifish beauties, disassemble them and reconstruct them into grotesque bulbous heaps, the vulva always exposed. The dolls are always adorned in mary jane shoes.
Jake & Dinos Chapman –These brothers build hilarious mutant children out of reconstructed mannequins…genitals usually replace facial features and they all wear sneakers. more images here
Real Dolls (nsfw) – These highly detailed, custom built sex dolls are extremely creepy in their realism. Some photographers of Real Dolls like Elena Dorfman and the uncredited pictures on this page (nsfw) blur the line between reality and fantasy.
Van Sowerwine – This Australian artist creates interactive installations where the viewer can manipulate the residents of a doll house. Surreal and awful outcomes occur. Play With Me (installation documentation – quicktime video) - Expecting (interactive quicktime video)
Peter Caine creates juvenile and very hilarious doll tableaus. Think Paul McCarthy with intentionally shoddy craftsmanship. Take a look at Michael Jackson and Doodoo-Head Boy (quicktime video..nsfw) and SLICK WILLY (cubscout Bill Clinton) (quicktime video).
Some of that stuff is really cool.
Speaking of real dolls any one see the film "Love Object"
It proudly fills a spot im my collection.
Posted by: Ed Word | June 15, 2005 at 08:32 PM
Don't forget the bellmer dolls in Ghost in the Shell 2 - amazing to see them pop up in there.
I might also put a plug in for my friend Julie's paintings - though as an art professor I'm the first to bemoan the surplus of shorthand doll-angst, I think Julie's got more than that going on. Check em out here:
Julie Farstad
Posted by: kevin | June 15, 2005 at 10:18 PM
hey! I know Julie!
Posted by: fatty | June 15, 2005 at 10:47 PM
yeah, she's a doll. now i wonder if i know YOU, fatty...perhaps we should take this off-blog.
Posted by: kevin | June 16, 2005 at 01:43 PM
Hey,
I am studying art for my HSC and have a rough idea of what i would like to do, but am failing to find any artists that have dome some similar, leaving me with nothing to research and alot of unanswered questions.
Im doing a photography piece where i will be useing females as Dolls, and putting them in abusive and Domination situations, as constructing it in the fourm of an Advertisement.
Do you know of any artists that have Dressed females up as dolls in an art work before. This would be really helpful in my studies.
Thanks for your time,
Posted by: Mikaela | January 29, 2006 at 12:24 AM