Sketchbook 1946

This drawing on grid paper, by Hans Bellmer, looks like it was made with a soft pencil. It shows his signature dismembered doll-like figures. Bellmer was clearly obsessed, right? I mean, look at the obsessive, repetitive lines. They reminded me of Cy Twombly but more…fraught. I can imagine him sitting there, night after night, working compulsively, mapping out his fantasies on this grid. I wonder if he was thinking of anatomical drawings, like a surgeon mapping out the body, but with a Surrealist twist. I’ve always thought of Bellmer as a dark cousin of Philip Guston. Both were exploring the darker sides of the psyche, but through very different vocabularies. Bellmer used a kind of eroticized nightmare, and Guston, those funny, lumpy figures that were somehow deeply human. It makes you think about how we all draw on each other, across time, turning ideas around in our heads, trying to make sense of the world.