The Doll
Made between July 1918 to March 1919 by German painter and dollmaker Hermine Moos, the doll was commissioned by expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschka intended for his artificial woman to mimic the likeness of his former lover Alma Mahler, and sent Miss Moos detailed instructions and sketches to guide her in the doll’s construction. He gave instructions for what materials she should use, and even where she might find them. While he expressed scathing disappointment towards Miss Moos upon the doll’s completion, he went on to throw parties in the doll’s honor, escort it to the opera, and even hired a maid to dress and serve it. The provocative nature of Kokoschka’s relationship with the doll, which he referred to in his letters with Miss Moose as his “fetish”, instigated wild speculation about the extent of their relationship.
Oskar Kokoschka met Alma Mahler in 1912, and asked her to marry him within 24 hours of meeting her. She refused his offer, but they undertook a passionate affair. She was his muse. Most scholars associate her with a high point in Kokoschka’s career; he created some of his best-known works while they were together. However, it didn’t last. In 1914, their relationship ended, their differences exasperated by the start of the war and Alma’s abortion of their child that year. Soon after, Kokoschka enlisted for the Austrian Cavalry, and by 1917, he had been hospitalized multiple times for a major brain injury and other battle injuries sustained on the Hungarian front. In 1918, Kokoschka returned to Germany traumatized from the war and likely feeling scorned to find his ex-lover, Alma, married to another man, Walter Gropius. It was then that he commissioned Hermine Moos to make the infamous doll.
Kokoschka was ultimately disappointed with Miss Moos and the doll she created. In his letters he cites Miss Moos’s use of goose feathers for the doll’s skin, which made it look like it had fur. It is unclear why Hermine decided to use goose feathers, as none of her letters in response to Kokoschka have survived. Scholars do know that her work tended to be more fantastical, and that it could have been a deliberate artistic choice she made, which would have fit in better with her work than a more realistic doll. It is also possible that the decision was due to supply shortages following World War I. In his letters to her, Kokoschka suggested she use canvas or silk, which she may not have been able to get ahold of.
Regardless of how much disdain he initially wrote about towards the doll, Kokoschka seemed to have gotten over it. In addition to taking it to the opera and dressing it in lavish costume, he used it as a muse for over eighty drawings and three finished paintings: Woman in Blue (1919), Painter with Doll (1920), and At the Easel (1922).
Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of this strange story is the way the doll ended. On a morning in late 1919, after a wild party the night before, police responded to a call about a dead body outside of Kokoschka’s house. Decapitated, and splattered with red liquid, the body was outside the house where the caller said it would be, but it was not a person, it was the doll, and the liquid was red wine. When police spoke to Kokoschka, he told them that he had been the one to ‘kill’ it, and splashed red wine over the body afterwards. Because of the peculiar nature of the doll’s ‘death’, scholars wonder if there was more to Kokoschka’s motive for having the doll made in the first place than just ‘madness’. Some point out his connection to the absurdist movement in Sweden, where he spent a bit of time after the war, and wonder if the whole situation could have been performance art. If that is so, the doll’s likeness to an ex-lover of his may have been more sinister than simple heartbreak.
Either way, the fact that Kokoschka insisted that the doll be made in the likeness of Alma Mahler, and that he insisted that only a woman could make his “fetish” come to life bring up an interesting conversation to be had about gender, and the commodification of bodies.
Alma Mahler Doll Made for Oskar Kokoschka by Hermine Moos. (n.d.). The Met. Retrieved January 24, 2022, from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/811532
Frank, P. (2018, June 25). The Creepy Tale Of An Artist Who Ordered, Then Decapitated, A Doll Made To Look Like His Ex. HuffPost. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artist-doll-creepy-oskar-kokoschka-alma-mahler_n_5b083018e4b0802d69cadbbc#:%7E:text=Hermine%20Moo’s%20%22Alma%20doll%2C%22%201919.&text=On%20an%20early%20morning%20in,lying%20immobile%20on%20his%20lawn.
Roos, B. (2005). Oskar Kokoschka’s Sex Toy: The Women and the Doll Who Conceived the Artist. Modernism/Modernity, 12(2), 291–309. https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2005.0067
Stein, S. (2015b, February 17). Remembering the Alma Mahler Doll in All Its Creepiness. The Paris Review. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/17/my-fair-lady/