After Alma Mahler married Walter Gropius, the painter Oskar Kokoschka, still obsessed with her, asked the Munich puppet maker Hermine Moos in 1918 to build a life-size doll resembling her. He sent detailed instructions, including skin like peach and hair on the intimate parts, and the letters were later published in a book called Der Fetische. Moos's doll was built from papier-mache, sawdust and a swan-skin covering, and when Kokoschka unpacked it he complained it looked more like a polar-bear pelt than a woman. He still took it to cafes and parties, painted it in several works, and later remembered the moment with rapture. Within a few years he had beheaded the doll in a rage.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.