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ivista Documents n. 7 (1930), Georges Bataille introduce il concetto di altération 318 . L’alterazione
è una forma del cambiamento, un aspetto della trasformazione. Il risultato dell’alterazione di un
modello è la sua resa come copia. I poupées di Bellmer costituiscono una esemplificazione adeguata
dell’alterazione nella particolare accezione batailleana 319 . Ballard cita direttamente l’artista tedesco
nel capitolo “The Great American Nude” (titolo di una serie di dipinti di Tom Wesselman) in The
Atrocity Exhibition: «Catherine Austin stared at the object on Talbert's desk. These flaccid globes,
like the obscene sculptures of Bellmer, reminded her of elements of her own body transformed into
a series of imaginary sexual organs» 320 . Luckhurst chiosa questa citazione citando a sua volta lo
stesso Ballard, a proposito di Bellmer, quindi Breton:
The marginal commentary note [by Ballard] expands: «Hans Bellmer's work is now totally out of
fashion, hovering as it does on the edge of child pornography [...] his vision is far too close for comfort to the
truth’ [p. 53]. The role of Woman as object of desire is central to Surrealism: “The problem of woman is the
most marvellous and most disturbing in all the world” [Breton, quoted by Whitney Chadwick, Women
artists, p.7]. Bellmer takes this logic to the extreme» 321 .
In una società nella quale il corpo della donna viene visto come un oggetto, e non soltanto
nel senso di oggetto del desiderio, le bambole di Bellmer si pongono come inquietanti feticci. La
‘death of affect’ di cui parla Ballard si manifesta anche nel rapportarsi al corpo della donna come a
una merce, qualcosa da manipolare e sfruttare a piacimento 322 . In “Mae West’s Reduction
Mammoplasty” Ballard evoca ancora Bellmer:
Were her [Mae West’s] breasts too large? No, as far as one can tell, but they loomed across the
horizons of popular consciousness along with those of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. […] The
bodies of these extraordinary women form a kit of spare parts, a set of mental mannequins that resemble
Bellmer’s obscene dolls 323 .
318
«By which he means that the formation of an image is its deformation, or the deformation of its model. For Bataille,
then, representation is less about formal sublimation than about instinctual release, and this position leads him to an
extraordinary formulation: “Art […] proceeds in this way by successive destructions. To the extent that it liberates
lIbidinal instincts, these instincts are sadistic.” [“L’Art primitif”] Such a desublimatory account of representation
contradicts our most cherished narratives of the history of art, indeed of civilization: that it develops through instinctual
sublimation, cognitive refinement, technical progression, and so on. […] In a note appended to his original definition
Bataille suggests that alteration also signifies both a “partial decomposition analogous to that of cadavers” and a
“passage to a perfectly heterogeneous state” related to the sacred and the spectral.» B. Noys, op. cit., p. 113.
319
«This erosion of sexual and generational difference is so scandalous because it exposes an archaic order of the
drives, “the undifferentiated anal-sadistic dimension.” [Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Creativity and Perversion, New
York, 1984, p. 78] Surrealism, I have argued, is drawn to this dimension, against which Breton reacts (with “shame,
disgust and morality”) and out of which Bataille philosophizes (with excremental abandon). More fully than any other
artist Bellmer situates surrealism in relation to this dimension. […] More directly than any other corpus the poupées
expose the desires and fears of the surrealist subject bound up with the uncanny and the death drive.» Ivi, p. 118-122.
320
J. G. Ballard, Atrocity, a cura di V. Vale e A. Juno, op. cit., p. 53.
321
R. Luckhurst, op. cit., p. 442.
322
«Drawing on the Surrealist interest in the objectification of women and on Pop Art’s explorations of the form such
objectification took in post-war consumer society, The Atrocity Exhibition takes the exploitation of the female sexed
body to a cruel extreme.» A. Gasiorek, op. cit., p. 74.
323
J. G. Ballard, Atrocity, a cura di V. Vale e A. Juno, op. cit., p. 114.
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