L’Ultrameuble (Eng: Ultrafurniture) is a work of surrealist art by Kurt Seligmann. This 1938 sculpture is a three legged stool where the legs are quite literally women’s legs (stockinged mannikins’ legs in high-heel shoes.). It first came to my attention via the excellent German book Sade / Surreal.
Dismembered body parts such as dolls, living plants and speaking body parts belong to the category of the grotesque and the uncanny. Freud wrote an essay on the latter entitled The Uncanny in 1919:
Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, as in a fairy tale of [Wilhelm] Hauff’s, feet which dance by themselves, as in the book by [Albrecht] Schaeffer which I mentioned above–all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when, as in the last instance, they prove capable of independent activity in addition. —The Uncanny (1919) – Sigmund Freud
A picture by Roger Schall of it here. It would make an ideal illustration for my page on independent body parts in fiction.
BTW, does anyone know the location of a the Legs video clip by ZZ Top?
P. S. I think I finally ‘ve been able to track the two writers Freud cites in his essay: Wilhelm Hauff and Albrecht Schaeffer.
Jan, thanks for the Amos Vogel comment. I absolutely love that book, and actually did think of him for the “archiveology” post but couldn’t find much of the book or his writing on-line to link to for people to read, which is why I didn’t include his name. But yes, he’s up there with the hungriest of cinephiles…!
The “Legs” video can be found here: http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/search/zz%2Btop%2Blegs/video/x7el3_zz-top-legs
Actually, I think that the other ZZ Top video – “Rough boy” – is a perfect example of “independent body parts in fiction” (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg5fx_zz-top-rough-boy)
Hi Georgy,
You are absolutely right, I did not mean legs, but Rough Boy
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Jan