Doll at Play

Long an underground classic, The Doll at Play, created by German artist Hans Bellmer and French poet Paul Eluard, is one of the strangest of texts in modern art. Presenting Bellmer's photography of "the doll, " this book combines the doll photos with text by Eluard that creates a strange tension between the contorted human images of Bellmer and the illusive poetry of Eluard. "Puffing out her cheeks, greedily swallowing a flower, fragrant inner skin, inevitably pink mouth, even on the pediment of the pitch black forest."