The Games of the Doll Between Innocence and Degeneration. Morton Bartlett and Elena Dorfman's Real Doll

Abstract

The doll has always exercised an ineluctably disturbing charm on the adult imaginary. If the most common meaning of the term is actually that of a toy for children, it is even possible to highlight its metaphorical overtones and semantic layers that relate the world of the doll to the broader context of the reified representations of the human figure. Dolls, statues, mannequins, robots: around a common conceptual framework, that of artificiality, these representations emerge for a complex polysemy and an intrinsic actuality, in their philosophical, sociological and psychological valences. In this article we take into consideration the psychological structures informing the human relationship with these representations, starting with the analysis of the photographic work of two contemporary artists, Morton Bartlett and Elena Dorfman, through which the doll reveals its evidence as adultmyth.