The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 17, 2025

Shirley Doll

1936

Herbert Matter

(American, 1907–1984)
America
gelatin silver print
Image: 20.2 x 25.8 cm (7 15/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2007.94
Location: Not on view

Description

Matter, who produced Shirley Doll while shooting an assignment for Life magazine on doll manufacturing, emphasizes the dolls’ objectness by presenting a multiplicity of identical, hairless, mass-produced toys, heaped every which way on a bed. The doll, simultaneously lifelike and inanimate, presents the type of unresolvable contradiction valued by the Surrealists.
  • The artist's estate, New York, NY
    (Art market, New York, NY)
    May 30, 2003
    (Villa Grisebach, Berlin, May 30, 2003)
    2003-2007
    David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY
    2007-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. Mentioned: p. 89; reproduced: p. 92; reproduced and mentioned: p. 227.
  • Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
  • {{cite web|title=Shirley Doll|url=false|author=Herbert Matter|year=1936|access-date=17 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2007.94