Dolls are not what we think they are. Far from mere toys or decorative objects, they are vessels of memory, meaning, and imagination—small bodies that carry big stories.
In The Art of the Doll: From Sculpture to Storytelling anthropologist and artist-scholar Erick DuPree offers a radical rethinking of the art doll as a powerful form of contemporary material culture. Through vivid analysis and artist profiles, DuPree explores how these intimate sculptural forms embody identity, emotion, myth, and memory—often speaking the unspeakable through clay, cloth, resin, and ritual.
From the deeply personal to the culturally transformative, art dolls emerge here as mirrors, oracles, and companions—offering us new ways to see ourselves and the worlds we build in miniature.
The Art of the Doll: From Sculpture to Storytelling is a cross-disciplinary study that reframes the contemporary art doll as a potent site of cultural meaning, aesthetic inquiry, and narrative expression.
The Art of the Doll: From Sculpture to Storytelling interrogates the doll as a liminal object—both animate and inanimate, symbolic and embodied—situated at the intersection of art, ritual, and identity construction.
Through analysis of materials, form, and artistic practice, Erick DuPree explores how the art doll functions as a vehicle for myth-making, memory work, trauma processing, and gender performance. Case studies of contemporary artists illustrate the doll’s capacity to serve as a sculptural autobiography, ceremonial vessel, and speculative subject. The book also examines the impact of emerging technologies such as 3D printing and digital sculpting on notions of craft, authorship, and the "aura" of the handmade.
By centering the doll’s role in visual storytelling and cultural symbolism—rather than its lineage as a collectible or plaything—this work offers a new framework for understanding the art doll as a dynamic and evolving form of material culture.