Olimpia Revisited. Variations on a Themeby E. T. A. Hoffmann in 20thCentury Avant-Garde Art

Abstract

The long reception of the doll Olimpia in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Sandmannrepresents the change of the ideologies concerning androids. The paper focuses on three transformations of the Romantic creature in 20thcentury Avant-garde art, namely, in works by Max Ernst, Oskar Schlemmer, and Cindy Sherman. It is aimed at showing how the machine myth of the 18thand 19thcenturies, closely related to Gothic Romanticism, could become an impor-tant part of 20thcentury art.

Keywords

• romanticism
• gothic fiction
• android
• avant-garde
• fine arts