Surrealism and the Cyborg:
Mannequins and Body Doubles
Lewis Kachur
I will focus on the historical dimension of the mannequins and body doubles in three instances of late Surrealism: the photographs of Hans Bellmer , the mannequins of the surrealist street at the 1938 surrealist exhibition and the performance of Salvador Dali’s Dream of Venus pavilion at the New York World’s Fair of 1939. I make the distinction between late surrealism with its greater theatricalization and the first phase of surrealism. The character of these two phases has a lot to do with the presence of or inclusion of Salvador Dali in the surrealist group beginning in 1929 and his push towards the object as well as his emphasis on the simulacrum. One of Dali’s important concepts is that of the Etre Objet, or the being object. I think that this is the first example in modernism of the body being considered as an object and as a sculptural material. The being object is perhaps most familiar now in the form of Gilbert and George’s living sculptures.
I want to start with (as a kind of presiding image), the famous illustration from the surrealists’ in-house journal Minotaur Magazine. Published in the early ‘30’s this image portrays the idea of the "being object." It includes actual people who, by their repetitive actions are considered as automatons and are analogized to those more machine-like robotic forms represented below them (fig. 1).
In the case of Hans Bellmer, we have a series of photographs of the articulated mannequin or the doll in both a tinted version and a black and white. I’m struck by the discussion so far about the collage aspect of this movement or what the surrealists also spoke of as bringing together distant realities on the same plane. I think the juxtapositions for Bellmer involve the real-looking or life-like gaze in the eyes of the mannequin in contrast to her prosthetic body below. That image can relate to what Sidra Stich was saying about the World War I cripples and people wearing wooden legs as real sights in European cities. Bellmer’s use of separate body parts is the raw stuff from which he then makes his illusionistic images of the doll, some of which strike the viewer as quite lifelike. In addition, I’m suggesting that the contrasting of the artificial with the real and the mannequin’s life-like eyes staring back are also used by other artists in the 1938 surrealist exhibition, for example, Kurt Seligman and Wolfgang Paalen.
It’s interesting to note that few wanted to talk about Bellmer twenty-five years ago in art historical terms and now he’s been rehabilitated thanks to Cindy Sherman and other artists whose work is related. It has been commonplace for about ten years now to juxtapose the work of Bellmer with Sherman’s much larger photographs, particularly in cases which employ real looking heads with artificial lower extremities. In the lower extremities in both the Sherman and the Bellmer there appears a wrapped androgynous body disturbingly disconnected from the head. In addition, both artists’ work can appear to be disturbingly erotic. Cindy Sherman’s photograph of medical mannequins are an obvious use of the prosthetic and artificial part (fig. 2). However, this obvious artificiality somehow does not obviate the horror they nonetheless convey. There is also the suggestion of a live face behind the mask, which you’re not sure about. In the same way we are not sure in the Bellmer which parts are mannequin and which parts are real. That kind of confusion of the bringing together of those two realities creates the spark that Sidra was speaking of in terms of surrealist theory and the goal for the reading of their art.
Surrealist Exhibition of 1938/Gender-Crossing
As an art historical footnote, nobody seems to have noticed that Bellmer is the presiding deity of the "surrealist street" in the exhibition of 1938, despite the fact that he didn’t actually make a mannequin. He was represented by two groups of six mounted and framed photographs. In this exhibition sixteen mannequins were decorated by different surrealist artists and writers, although the kind of work produced is a kind of "de-skilled" activity. Almost anybody, even without artistic training, could assemble or disassemble or collage a mannequin that they had rented from one of the Parisian department stores. In fact, a number of writers and amateurs participated. In addition, behind each of the mannequins are street signs suggesting that they may in fact be streetwalkers. Street walkers put the spectator in the same position as when viewing Picasso’s Demoiselles, that is, being in a customer/client relationship or a person who is supposed to choose among the available selection, here curbside as it were.
The invitation card to the surrealist exhibition is an (fig. 3) interesting example of pseudo-cyborgism. The promised apparition of Dali’s "object beings" and automaton who is supposed to be a descent from Frankenstein. This was just a great hoax when no such being appeared at the opening. But the etre objet and Masson’s quasi-robotic mannequin (with birdcage over head) were to be seen. Other mannequins included Duchamp’s Rose Selavy, which is the first three-dimensional appearance of Duchamp’s alter ego. Rose Selavy only existed before in the famous photo sessions with Man Ray and as a literary or "signature" personage. Here she is in all her embodied reality, which of course is utterly fake, except for the fact that she wears Duchamp’s real clothing, hat and shoes. In the Miro mannequin there is a bit more subtle gesture towards gender-crossing and maybe also a sort of graffiti-like suggestion by the huge handlebar moustache on the face of the mannequin. And of course, all the mannequins rented were females, and all but one of the artists and writers to transform them were males. The writer George Hugnet talked about them as a kind of Pygmalion that the artists were trying to bring to life.
Installation Design/Fashion
What are some of the contemporary reflections of these examples? We can look at Keinholtz’s Backseat Dodge in relation to Dali’s Rainy Taxi. It becomes clear that the surrealist exhibition and its innovation in methods of display was to have great impact on installation as an art form. In additon, there is a conjunction between Dali’s mannequin and the projected images of Tony Oursler. In Oursler’s work (fig. 4) we see a very real looking projected image of a head against the obviously fake and sort of bodiless lower part of the artist’s clothed creatures. I also think clothing speaks a certain language reflecting social codes and modes of interpretations. It shows too in Dali’s use of elegant gloves that the mannequin wears and the winter or ski mask designed by the very fashionable clothes designer, Elsa Schiaparelli whom Dali had collaborated with. I also want to mention Cindy Sherman’s work again in this context in terms of the way her mannequins are prepared before they are photographed. All of her "dressing up" is recorded in the document of the photograph.
I think that there is a kind of future play in this whole mode which contrasts the photographic and the mannequin as Tony Oursler did. In addition, an artist I just sawthis summer in Tel-Aviv, named Richard Ruven who made these two pieces. These are recent works that (at least what’s come into my field of vision) present the cyborg and the surreal in a meeting on fairly equal ground, and maybe some nod to similar work by Matthew Barney as well.
Salvador Dali/ New York’s World’s Fair
After the ’38 Surrealist Exhibition took place in Paris, Salvador Dali attempted to recreate parts of it in New York in 1939. But even earlier, Dali had introduced this idea of Etre Objet, a live being as an object, himself included. It is exemplified by the rose-headed woman who stood in Trafalgar Square in 1936 for the London Surrrealist Exhibition, or by Dali himself who gave a lecture at that exhibition in a diving suit. His metaphor was that the diving suit enabled him to better explore the depths of the subconscious or unconscious mind. Similarly, his Dream of Venus Pavillion in the amusement zone of the 1939 New York’s World’s fair employs an array women divers performing inside the pavilion.
As a respite from holding their breath underwater, the twelve to fourteen young women who performed as Venus divers had an adjacent dry tank. If they lay there in the so-called ‘ardent couch" they were mirrored in a double reflection which confused illusion with reality. In addition a cut-out appearing over the headboard seemed to be another mirror, but it was actually a view into the pool. So one is not quite sure if he’s looking at a reflection or an actual person. This Eric Schaall photo has a sense of a theatricalized Radio City Hall shot. Costumed divers are standing at the other end of the ardent couch. Its thirty-six feet long. The swimmers are gesturing towards the typical Dali melting watch-scape (fig. 5). On "the beach" is an over-sized mannequin with a lion head. In fact, what I’m struck by in a lot of these images is the fusion with the animal, which Suzanne mentioned as one of the themes connecting Surrealism with the cyborg. This fusion between the world of the animal or the botanical is quite prominent in Dali and surrealism; correspondingly there is quite a lack of fusion with the robotic for its own sake, unless one conceives of the prosthetic in terms of the robotic.
On Simulacra
In Horst’s Model with Seafood Dress (1939), she appears to be wearing a Dali designed bathing suit, but actually there is no suit. It’s an ink drawing on the photograph and a very convincing illusion. Even when you’re looking at the photo (fig. 6), its hard to believe that’s not an actual suit. The realized design is shown on the right in a photograph under water. I’m not sure how this photo was done. It shows what was called the "Gay-90’s" girdle and one of the divers swimming before a rubberoid cow putting her arm through a chainlink man who was also made out of cast rubber. These casts were an outgrowth of corporate sponsorship. Dali had been working with a rubber manufacturer, trying to show ways the material could be cast in strange and innovative ways, sort of an "ardent commerce." In other words, the corporatization of the manufactured body.
The simulacra that is perhaps best realized is with (fig. 7)(fig. 8) the piano-bodied woman, whose body is painted like keys. You can see the black keys in side view and in an overhead view from above the tank, showing the potential confusion between the live diver and the rubberoid woman—the uncanny conflation between the animate and inanimate which is experienced by the viewer.
The Performative Photograph
I want to recap in terms of the theatricalized or performative photograph, the staged tableau. It is not at all a snapshot, but obviously a set-up, going back to Bellmer again and his hand—the photographer’s own live hand-brushing the cheekof the inanimate mannequin and the strangeness of that interplay. Dali in ’38 with the fragment, or the head, of one of the mannequins that’s been swallowed by the shark’s teeth, holding up next to the real full-length mannequin next to the even more real full-length Dali, himself, in a kind of interesting play of levels. I’m sure a tableau was set up by Dali himself. Moving to New York; for the Fair, Dali runs around in photo studios in Queens doing shots for publicity purposes that had no other function. Dali again, with the lobster symbol, dressing the nude model, who seems to me to be posing as if she were lifeless or mannequin –like. Even stranger Gala joins Dali in the contrast between nude and clothed. Its very striking and reminds me of some of those Lucas Samaras portraits of the ‘70’s, where he peeks in at the side—he can’t resist being in the photo himself—even though it’s supposed to be a portrait of somebody else.
So that’s a quick overview on some of the material of surrealism that maybe is less familiar and would be a prelude to the other speakers taking on the more cyborgian aspect. But I do think that there is an underlying impulse that’s quite similar. It is in that the desire for the simulacra, or the vertigo of the uncannybetween levels of reality that are collaged together in surrealism. Although at times that may look a bit naïve now or dated. Yet I think it’s really that we become aware of the ancientness of technology rather than a lack of interest in creating that sort of frisson of the cyborgian simulacra. In comparing, for example the images of George Juneau and Eric Schaal’s photo’s of Dali’s reprise of The Rainy Taxi, one is hardpressed to decide which of theses figures is live and which is artificial.
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