List Price: $63.00
Save: $7.00 (11%)

FREE Shipping.

Only 3 left in stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Saturday, April 23? Order within and choose Saturday Delivery at checkout. Details

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$25.68

+ $3.99 shipping

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Hawking Books

Condition: Used: Good

Comment: Good Condition. Has some writing/highlighting. Five star seller - Buy with confidence!

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (The Discovery Series) Hardcover – April 3, 2001

by Therese Lichtenstein (Author)

5 customer reviews

See all 2 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$56.00

$40.46

$25.68

Hardcover
$56.00 24 Used from $25.68 26 New from $40.46 1 Collectible from $50.00

The life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s are the subject of Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book. Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls—with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poses—were just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text.

Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise, Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque—often sexual—positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence.

Lichtenstein interprets Bellmer's complex expressions of eroticism as a protest against the Nazis and also against his father, a cold and repressive Nazi sympathizer. At the same time, she says, by hyperbolically flaunting a passive femininity in a theatrical manner, Bellmer's images allow us to consider how cultural representations can affect the formation of identity and alternative possibilities.

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (The Discovery Series)

$56.00 FREE Shipping. Only 3 left in stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Jennifer Mundy

6

Hardcover
$95.79
Malcom Green

5

Paperback
$20.00
Peter Webb

4

Paperback
$25.25
Hal Foster
Paperback
$23.33
Sue Taylor

3

Paperback
$34.95
Elfriede Jelinek
Hardcover
$46.29

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Series: The Discovery Series (Book 9)
Hardcover: 266 pages
Publisher: University of California Press (April 3, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520209842
ISBN-13: 979-0520209847
Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,092,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1546 in Books > Arts & Photography > Architecture > Individual Architects & Firms
- #3007 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography & Video > Erotic Photography
- #6195 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Criticism

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

(What's this?)

Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars

5 star		60%
4 star		20%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		20%

See all 5 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

A beautifully crafted book, cautious interpretations

By Carrie McGath on July 1, 2004

Format: Hardcover

Therese Lichtenstein's "Behind Closed Doors" will immediately grab you visually, as any book about art or an artist should. It rivals Sue Taylor's "Anatomy of Anxiety" as far as visual appeal with the book itself and the plates therein. However, Lichtenstein's discussion of the exceedingly complex Hans Bellmer is a little too cautious, a little too much of a large brushstroke. This is a great book for a reader who knows little about Bellmer's work to read, but if you are hoping for some biography with your art discussion, this one does not have very much.
This book is significant, though. Lichtenstein's discussion of Bellmer's life and art within an historical context is an engrossing and very well-documented discussion, but since so much of the book is spent on such interpretation, I feel it has left a lot of Hans, the man, and where his dolls really came from, by the wayside.
This is merely opinion, and it may be that what was needed (and I guess I can accept this) was a new look at Bellmer and his work, with a little less focus on castration anxiety, his relationship with his father, his brother, and his lack of ability to truly be a child when he was a child. But I fear it was never really investigated b/c of the inherent taboo nature of Bellmer the man. It may have been me, but it always kind of felt like Lichtenstein was holding back a little, a tone of tension, perhaps, a touch of apprehension.
What I feel is absolutely wonderful in Lichtenstein's book: its absolutely gorgeous creation, and the inclusion of a couple of Bellmer's own writing.
As I said, for a reader just beginning to delve into the surreal world of Hans Bellmer, it is perfection. For those who already know a good deal about Bellmer, it is still very much worth it for the beautiful construction of the book, the excellent plates of his work, his own writing that is also contained, as well as Lichtenstein's solid, though sometimes redundant, interpretations of Hans Bellmer's work.

Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Beautiful.

By Robert Beveridge HALL OF FAMEVINE VOICE on January 5, 2005

Format: Hardcover

Therese Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (University of California Press, 2003)

If you are aware of Hans Bellmer, you probably don't need this review. If you are not aware of Hans Bellmer, you're probably not reading this review. So... fish!A blowdryer. Seven kinds of candy and a needle threaded with bullion stitching together tree limbs in the desert.

Lichtenstein does a fine job of deconstructing Bellmer, not only focusing on his subversion of Nazi ideology (ground already well-trod in art criticism), but pulling in biographical data to give a clearer understanding of what forces drove Bellmer to create life-sized dolls, assemble the pieces in odd ways, and then photograph them hundreds of times with only the smallest changes in position. Her essay is clear, readable, excellent. The book's main problem is that, well, for an art book, there's not terribly much art. More pictures, please! (Especially the drawings, a side of Bellmer's art seen all too rarely.) What art there is is reproduced well, though that's to be expected from an art book, wot? The book also uses the annoying, but increasingly common, convention of end-of-the-book endnotes instead of footnotes (or even end-of-the-chapter notes, annoying but not as much so). Stopping every half-page or so to flip to the back of the book makes for not-so-happy readers.

Still, a fine work on a sadly neglected artist. Worth your time. ****

Comment 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer

By psiconetic@hotmail.com on November 17, 2001

Format: Hardcover

This is a good book to dicover the strange world of Hans Bellmer. Therese Lichtenstein describes the history of the dolls and Hans Bellmer with the contribution of people that were close to Bellmer. She also try to give a sociologic, anthropologic and psychoanalitic explanation to Bellmer's work. I think it's a good book to buy!

Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Behind Closed MINDS

By A Customer on April 26, 2001

Format: Hardcover

For me, this book was more than a mere companion to the exhibition, which I was fortunate enough to see. It caused me to reconsider my uncritical reluctance to take Bellmer seriously.

1 Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer

By A Customer on April 24, 2001

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Too many words. Not enough photoes as an art book.

Comment 14 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 5 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more

This item: Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (The Discovery Series)

Set up a giveaway