The exhibition at Tate Liverpool is an opportunity not only for the artist to recreate The Uncanny, but to update it, so that the exhibition itself becomes a work in progress. The uncanny, and its attendant (compulsions), such as (the impulse to collect), are thus enacted rather than merely represented.
Uncanny The Art Institute
The Surrealist fascination with automata, especially the uncanny dread produced by their dubious animate/inanimate status, prepared the way for the enthusiastic reception in France of Bellmer's doll. His stated preoccupation with little girls as subjects for his art, moreover, coincided with the Surrealist idealization of the femme-enfant, a muse whose association with dual realms of alterity, femininity and childhood, inspired male artists in their self-styled revolt against the forces of the rational. But these dovetailing concerns—of the artist-intellectuals grouped around André Breton in Paris, and of the isolated Bellmer, working in virtual seclusion in a suburb of Berlin—were arrived at separately. Bellmer's doll, the first sculptural construction of an erstwhile graphic designer, developed out of a series of three now legendary events in his personal life: the reappearance in his family of a beautiful teenage cousin, Ursula Naguschewski, who moved to Berlin from Kassel in 1932; his attendance at a performance of Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, in which the protagonist falls tragically in love with the lifelike automaton Olympia; and a shipment from his mother of a box of old toys which had belonged to him as a boy. Overwhelmed with nostalgia and impossible longing, Bellmer acquired from these incidents a need, in his words, "to construct an artificial girl with anatomical possibilities...capable of re-creating the heights of passion even to inventing new desires."[1]
When that time comes, people will flock to museums. Until then, individuals will have to seek revelation through the uncanny, intriguing world of digital art. The Art Institute of Chicago has affirmed that even in this time of necessary isolation, engaging with art can remain a singular and sacred experience.
Distinct in vision and style, the works each create immersive environments that evoke stillness and space for contemplation. Whether through interdisciplinary art, sound, or uncanny symbolism, each installation provides a fertile arena in which thoughts can rise to the surface.
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