Doll or Diva?

View all photographs up for auction here

The Spellbinding Gaze of a Doll

The doll has a fairly intense look in its eyes. Crystal clear blue eyes that draw you in and won't let you look away. The photographer Eva Merz, a Danish artist whose work contains both a social and international aspect, is the artist behind the portrait "Some Secrets/Doll Pictures". The work is one of a series of nine doll portraits that Merz exhibited at the Photographic Centre in Copenhagen in 2002.

In the series, she has placed the same doll in front of different coloured backgrounds and in different coloured sets of clothes, as if the doll was a living being. But the insistent stare and the moulded, stiffened features betray it. It is not alive, so what does it want with us?

The Lifelike Doll

Eva Merz is not alone in her fascination of the doll as an object. The doll has been the focal point of countless artwork – from H.C. Andersen's "Dance, Dance, Doll of Mine" and E.T.A. Hofmann's fairy tales to the creepy "Poupée" series by French surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer, as well as more innocent pop-cultural phenomena such as Disney's "Pinocchio" (inspired by an Italian children's book).

The Doll Is Never Just One Thing

The art historian and associate professor Rune Gade wrote in the foreword to the catalogue for Merz' exhibition in 2002 a succinct description of the dynamics that hit you when standing face to face with the image of a doll:

In photographed form, the doll is more alive than it is as a thing [...] the photograph gives it life, fills it with meaning [...] The doll is never just one thing. Rune Gade: "Certain Secrets - about the life of the Doll". (2002)

Merz' Staged Doll’s Play

The doll does have a special ability to ignite our imagination – perhaps because many of us from quite a young age have played with dolls, perhaps because the human traits simply have an instinctively alluring effect. We are tricked by the interaction between the doll and the photographic, because of the questions that arise about the photograph’s ability to capture living moments of reality. In Merz' photograph of a dead thing such as a doll, staged as a straightforward portrait, we are drawn in by our own imagination, rather than by a direct depiction of reality. The vivid artificiality enchants us and allow new stories to spring forth.

Lerfeldt's Doll Compositions

At the auction, it is not only Eva Merz who works with the doll motif. The Danish artist Hans Henrik Lerfeldt, famous for his often highly erotic paintings, also plays with the doll motif in a series of photographs that come from his estate. The pictures have some very different sexual overtones and are part of an album of private photographs by and with the artist himself. In one photograph, he is portrayed with a scantily clad mannequin in his studio. And in several other pictures he has staged a whole series of photographs where a woman is duking it out with a doll in a green-brown autumn scenery.

Doll or Diva?

The actress Marilyn Monroe's style, beauty and sex appeal are legendary – even today more than 50 years after her death. She is said to be the most photographed woman in the world, and her beauty has been documented to such an extent that you never mistake her signature blond curls. She is an eternal icon whom we can fill with our own perceived meaning rather than a woman of flesh and blood – not unlike a doll. The American fashion photographer Philippe Halsman is one of the photographers who paved the way for Monroe's iconic status with a series of world-famous portraits. At this auction we present three Marilyn Monroe portraits stamped by Halsman, including the famous portrait from the cover of Life magazine in 1952 and one of his equally famous pictures of a jumping Marilyn.

Preview and Auction

Included in the auction, we also have works by some of the most talented Danish artists of recent years, such as Ebbe Stub Wittrup, Peter Holst Henckel, Peter Funch, Peter Land, Mai-Britt Boa, Julie Boserup and international names such as Garry Fabian Miller, Nobuyoshi Araki and the punk photographer Roberta Bayley. All the photographs can be viewed at our preview at Baltikavej 10 in Copenhagen on 5 and 6 February between 10 am and 5 pm. The auction itself is currently up and running on bruun-rasmussen.dk and will begin to end on 6 February at 7 pm.