In 1918, the painter Oskar Kokoschka going crazy ordering a young seamstress and costume drama Munich, named Hermine Moos realizes he wants her for himself a replica - A doll-size - Alma Mahler, his former mistress, whom he has remained deep in love (Alma Mahler, widow of composer Gustav Mahler, is in its relationship with Kokoschka the second wife of architect Walter Gropius) . This biographical episode is historically proven authentic, the doll-effigy of Alma Mahler was indeed commissioned by Oskar Kokoschka to Hermine Moos (she was even delivered, and it was used).
The doll Kokoschka , the beautiful novel of Helen Frederick , his first (published by Vertical early 2010), adopts the perspective of the young artist costume, giving us to read, dated the day of writing, the pages of secret diary she kept during the implementation of this very strange order - a diary in which she do not trust only working papers, but the torrent of his inner thoughts. If the order is so unreasonable, that Kokoschka that he does not want to book a simple doll-size woman, but this doll-size woman is a perfect replica of his lost love, Alma Mahler, it can simultaneously possess inanimate object as it will be, and be in his company the very presence of a living human being, and passionately loved. It's a fetish is a magical object or structure that wants to own delusional Kokoschka, not an ordinary doll, but that this object is to match its fantasies fanatics, it must first be confusing and a perfect replica of his living model, while having to overcome limitations of simple perfect replica for quite a substitute in the painter's life in his living style and lost.
The command is passed to Hermine Moos is totally senseless and impossible, but it nevertheless accepts it, and the company making this fetish will take place at the intersection of Unreason its sponsor and its artist. Such the situation is complex and knotty, that runs with finesse and strength to both the novel by Helen Frederick: The situation of Hermine Moos plunging into the task, which takes place in a game of possession and 'ROW cross involving Kokoschka (owned by his love for Alma Mahler and wishes, love and Alma, have returned through the doll), Hermine involving itself (under the influence of madness incurred the company and the desire to be ultimately herself the object of desire which the doll will be the recipient and relay) and finally involving inanimate fetish to be the junction interface, the node of this set of desires dialectical.
In his novel, among the pages of the newspaper Hermine Moos, Helen Frederick inserts short scenes from the paintings of Oskar Kokoschka, whose title and date whenever mentioned, that have attitudes, feelings and thoughts of the female model, under the gaze of the Kokoschka during the posing session that was necessary for the canvas. The nature of the narrator of this series scenes of the novel is ambiguous: the first refers the painter's models in the third person, and very soon it will be the models themselves who will be given the floor to the first. At the same time along the progress of the novel, over reading the newspaper Hermine Moos, there is his immersion in the thirst to be the object of desire mad Kokoschka, and substitute Alma Mahler as a model for the doll that she makes. These texts from tables (tables none of which are post 1918 and all that, therefore, existed on the dates of the plot of the novel) function as a series of notes to the positioning of this device Hermine Moos psychological and erotic, and are analogous to that location specific model as an object trapped but also closing in on return, and by fine instinctive tactics resistance, the trap depends on the painter's desire to control.
Soon gradually on both sides of the doll commonly desired, and in its place is Kokoschka and Hermine Moos who in turn become the puppet the game of manipulation. Ermine which undergoes the distance and coldness of the painter Kokoschka and is fully subject to the work of Hermine to his fantasy of owning a fetish of Alma Mahler could be assuaged. The manner, condition, what the young costume Munich to desire to be owned by the painter, as is the doll that she manufactures (by selecting, for example, sometimes as his "client", which echoes the clients of his occasional practice of prostitution) is also a way for her to set itself up as subjects of desire, and tilt towards Oskar Kokoschka the status of being manipulated. So it is for her to be the ultimate object of desire is at the same time, at the cost of attendance of dangerous madness, a construction of herself as a subject of desire it operates.
© Anthony Poiraudeau - 2010
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Helen Frederick, The doll Kokoschka , Portraits, 2010
France Culture has recently aired a twofold , titles A Doll what? and the other half of the doll devoted to the order by Oskar Kokoschka, to Hermine Moos, a doll replica Alma Mahler. We hear of Helen Frederick interventions as well as readings from his novel.
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