Mannequin Inspiration

[defect3d]

When I was browsing online I came across an interesting read. On how the Mannequin enemies which appear on SH2 seem to be inspired by German artist Hans Bellmer of the Nazi party in 1933. He was known for his surreal approach of artwork, but most often considered pornographic.

Here are some related images provided by The Nachtkabarett

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This just adds to the list of inspirations..

[Harrys_Girl]

Those images, of The Doll are so, intriguing because of they are so disturbing. The one of it standing next to the tree, is amazing. I must sound off for putting my wording as such, but I stared at that for over 20 minutes...


I am glad you brought up this link. I had heard they were inspired by an old painting, but had bever really stopped to look at it.

[crucifix]

i thought this was common knowledge.

[amphreded]

Yup, you're right. There was a thread on Hans Bellmer here in our forum but it was purged.
One of the surrealists that was truly original.

[defect3d]

Yup, you're right. There was a thread on Hans Bellmer here in our forum but it was purged.
One of the surrealists that was truly original.

Ah, I ran a couple of searches with only 2 threads showing up with related keywords thus this thread was created.

[amphreded]

Don't worry, old thread no longer exists. You can create a new one no prob.

[Xigz]

Definitely see the resemblance.

Just those two picture put him on my favorite artists list. I need to look for more of his work.

[Dutchman]

That's just awesome!

[delusion]

Disturbing... it looks fat.

[Detective Cartland]

Very nice find. Imagine that seeing that thing in the middle of the forest. Disturbing at best.

[Creation]

Wow, thanks for these images, they really stir up some uh...disturbing thoughts.

I can see the relation to the mannequin monsters though.

[Cold_Ethyl]

one thing though, he was anti-nazi his artwork was combating the idealism of the perfect body! One of the key things with his work is that all the mannequins look disfigured and twisted but at the same time extremely sexual, although a lot are distorted with the joints he added they only seem like exagerrations of natural human creases which makes them all the more disturbing. Like Silent Hill acheived he made something extremely familiar something chilling.

Bellmer is one of my favourite artists, i'm really lucky as some of his work is in my local art gallery including one of his dolls.

[Detective Cartland]

Interesting. I didn't know that.

[angelofROOM302]

Very creepy looking.
I can't tell if it's two people standing together or not. I don't want to know the answer either.

[headkickrodeo]

Was he in the NSDAP proper? Or was he in the SA? If his work was considered pornographic, he was prolly in the SA, which had a lot of surrealists/avant-garde types.

Hitler kinda went power mad after saving Germany's ass from that horrid depression and winning everyone's respect, and ordered the whole night of the long knives thing...killing off most of the SA and other leftists involved with National Socialism. Kind of an un-Aryan thing to do, if ya ask me. After all that, the more avant-garde artists and writers in Germany had real hard time and were banned from a lot of publications and galleries, so they turned against Hitler. Not against National Socialism, just Hitler, who was kinda drifting away from the philosophical aspects anyways (especially the finding beauty and respect in all life aspect that Alfred Rosenberg wrote about...which by default makes 99.9% of all post-war Nazi's profoundly misguided...).

Anyways, thanks for posting those pics. I'd heard of him somewhere but never got to see any of his work. Lots of good art came out of the WW2 era.

When I was browsing online I came across an interesting read. On how the Mannequin enemies which appear on SH2 seem to be inspired by German artist Hans Bellmer of the Nazi party in 1933. He was known for his surreal approach of artwork, but most often considered pornographic.

Here are some related images provided by The Nachtkabarett

PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:

PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:

This just adds to the list of inspirations..

[Breaka]

This is one of the things that makes Silent Hill unique. Like what other series incorporates proper art into its design? And not just one style either. It's taken loads of different styles and mixed them all into this new thing.

Its like how they worked Giger into Aliens.

[The Adversary]

H.R. Giger designed the aliens for the film.

[Breaka]

Yes, thats right Mockey, he did.

[Tobor]

Its fitting that Hans Bellmer created these Dolls out of the fact that he was sexually aroused by the underage woman's body.
Now, thats not exactly the case with James in SH2, but the monsters were fabricated out of james' sexual fancies.

[BodyHorror]

This is how important Hans Bellmer has been to Silent Hill 2:

"How uncanny is the image of the Doll! It is defined by its very ambivalence. On one hand, its hard, smooth and cold nudity evokes an impassive, morbid and petrified body, while on the other, its wild, flaming hair writhes like a thousand snakes, its pearly flesh swells up like cushions or clouds and the clothes are crumpled and torn. Along with the gestures and life-like movements, La Poupée talks in mute signs. Tempting yet forbidden, obsessively reappearing, close but ungraspable [...] newly risen dead or a relic incarnating the primitive, dionysaic nymph [...] at the same time under the waxy mask of Botticelli's Venus and other classical figures. [...] Always double and pivoting on opposing pricniples, La Poupée possesses, above all, the 'convulsive beauty' or 'veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial' sought simultaneously by the Surrealists."

From my book on Hans Bellmer by Hatje Cantz. Google La Poupée to see it with its upper body as well.