Untitled 1963

Hans Bellmer made this untitled graphite drawing sometime in the 20th century, and it's a trip! It’s all pale grays, built up with delicate, almost tentative lines, a bit like a half-remembered dream, or maybe a nightmare. Check out the surface; you can practically feel the paper’s tooth. Bellmer doesn’t hide anything. His lines are searching, unsure, full of adjustments and corrections. Take the chair in the foreground, morphing into something else entirely. Is it disturbing? A little funny? Definitely both! Bellmer reminds me of Louise Bourgeois, both playing with the grotesque, with sexuality, but always with this undercurrent of melancholy. Art doesn't have to be pretty; it can be awkward, unresolved, and still totally captivating. It’s the process, the struggle, that makes it real.