‘ON FIGURE/S Drawing after Bellmer’ Book Launch

Raised by a fascist father in Nazi Germany, the Surrealist artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975) dedicated his œuvre to a perverse rewriting of the symbolic order. Famous for the two dolls he constructed in the mid-1930s, his transgressive ideas around the body as anagram were shared by his partner Unica Zürn. Both broke received codes of behaviour and the implicit rules of language, providing fertile ground for artists and other thinkers, including feminists, to similarly rewrite the body.

ON FIGURE/S Drawing after Bellmer, published by MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, gathers responses to its themes: body as letter, word and sentence; perversion and enjoyment; technical and forensic drawing in pursuit of pleasure; the other than human – becoming object, plant, animal. The book is a way to think through and with works of art and their histories, involving multiple textual forms, collage, and drawing, which take the radical and transgressive energy of Bellmer and Zürn in unexpected directions.

This book launch event will include contributors to the book talking about its themes, explored in the related Drawing Room exhibition FIGURE/S: drawing after Bellmer, and will take the form of both live responses and readings and pre-recorded videos and performances.

This discussion will be hosted at the gallery on Thursday 14th October.

Before your visit, please read about the safety measures we've put in place to protect the health and wellbeing of our visitors, supporters and gallery team.

Contributors to the publication: Paul Buck, Lola Bunting, Alice Butler, Paul Chan, Iris Colomb, Vincent Dachy, Zoë Dowlen, Rachel Genn, Aurelia Guo, Mathew Hale, Tom Hastings, Rebecca Jagoe, Sharon Kivland, Sarah Lederman, Kate Macfarlane, Kumi Machida, Louis Mason, Reba Maybury, Jade Montserrat, John Murphy, Michael Newman, Bernard Noël, Tamarin Norwood , Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Aura Satz, Sophie Seita, Anne Lesley Selcer, Isabel Seligman, Sarah Wilson

ON FIGURE/S Drawing after Bellmer is edited by Kate Macfarlane, Michael Newman, Sharon Kivland, and Louis Mason.