Strange Beauty: Hannah Höch and the Photomontage Author(s): Kristin Makholm Source: MoMA, No. 24 (Winter - Spring, 1997), pp. 19-23 Published by: The Museum of Modern Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4381346 Accessed: 10-08-2014 15:44 UTC

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This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:44:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions StrangeBeauty: m HANNAHEUocH and the Ph)otomo n tage

KRISTIN MAKHOLM

THE NAME HANNAH HOCH is probablynot thefirst to come to mind when consideringthe anticsof Berlin . Artists such as ,,or RaoulHausmann seem moresuited to Dada'spolitical and social critiquesand its loud-mouthed,rowdy contempt of traditionalbourgeois art and aesthetics.Yet it is Hannah Hoch, whom HansRichter dubbed the "goodgirl" of Berlin Dada, who took the characteristicDada medium of pho- tomontageto its most provocativeand challengingheights. With photographsfrom mass-marketperiodicals, Hoch's -J, ~ ~ ~ 9 photomontagesdisplay the chaosand combustionof Berlin's visual culture from a particularlyfemale perspective.By chartingher preoccupation with photomontagefrom I9I8 to A -i'w,'u' , * 7 the earlyI970s, the exhibitionThe Photomontages ofHannah Hoch, on view at The Museumof ModernArt from Febru- ary27 to May 20, demonstratesHc&hs remarkable achieve- ments in this quintessential modern medium and her sensitivityto the powerof an explosivemedia culture. Born in I889, Hoch becamepart of the Berlinart scene when both and Expressionismwere in full swing.She arrivedin Berlinfrom her home in the German provinceof Thuringiaat the age of twenty-twoto studythe applied arts, which included the creation of designs for ,, textiles, and glass. By 19I5 she had met the Czech emigreartist ,who drew her into the avant-gardecircle aroundHerwarth Walden and his famousDer Sturmgallery-the leadingenclave of Expressionistartists and writers in Berlin. From this point on, Hoch maintained a balance Flight(F/-icht) I931 Photomontage 9'/16 x 7? Institut fr AuslandsbeziehL.nge, StIttgart. betweentwo seeminglycontradictory realms: the world of the avant-garde,whose exhibitionsand poetryreadings she attended with Hausmann; and the commercial sector, where she a groupof young Berlinartists disillusioned with warand politicsand workedas a designerof embroideryand from I9I6 to i926 at the the discrepanciesbetween traditional art and modernlife. Within the large Ullstein PublishingCompany, creators of popular magazines realms of art, poetry, performance,and criticism, artists such as and newspapers,such as the BerlinerIllustrirte Zeitung and Die Dame. H6ch, Hausmann, Grosz, and Heartfieldembraced the tempest of The patterndesigns Hoch createdfor Ullstein'swomen's magazines modernlife in the new metropolis,calling for the artist'swholeheart- and her earlyexperiments with modernistabstraction were integrally ed commitmentto the eventsof the day. related,blurring the boundariesbetween traditionally masculine and Theirwork was infiltrated by sweepingforces: the unstablepolitical femininemodes of form and expression. and socialsituation brought about by the NovemberI9I8 revolution By I9I8 Dada had emergedin Berlin, transferredthere from its and the formationof Germany'scontroversial Weimar Republic; the wartimeorigins in Zurichby the writerRichard Huelsenbeck. Essen- barrageof technologyand new formsof industry;and the massmedia tiallyan antagonisticnonsense word, "Dada"became the battlecry of glut of illustratedmagazines, newspapers, , and film. 19

This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:44:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Gutwsith the Kitchen Knife Dada throuoghthe LwastWeimzar Beer-Belly Gu/ttural Epo0ch of/Germsany (.Schuict mit demlKiibchnmesscr dutch die lecztcuetimarerlc Bierb6auchkultltrepDoche DeutschlandsJ).I9I9-20. Photomontage. 447/8 X 357/16". Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preugischler Kulturbesitz, Narionialgalerie. Photo courtesy Bildarchiv Preugischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. Photo: Jorg P. Anders.

This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:44:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernforms of propagandasuch as pamphlets,posters, and advertisementsbrought their rhetoric to an audience familiarwith theseforms of publicaddress. Hoch responded to the Dadaist call for explosive, modernforms of expressionthrough her creationof pho- tomontage,which she and Hausmannbegan to construct aftera vacationto the BalticSea in the summerof I9I8. Here they discovereda type of commemorativemilitary picturewith the heads of differentsoldiers pasted in, a practicewith deep roots in folk tradition and popular consumer imagery. By cutting out photographs and wordsfrom mass-marketmagazines and pamphletsand reassemblingthem into fracturednew compositions, Hoch and the otherDada artistsreconfigured the images of dailylife into abstractedworks reminiscent of the hec- FT ~ E tic pace of modern urban life. They downplayedtheir works"mon- rolesas individualcreators by callingthese ~~A* tages,'which suggeststhe impersonalact of a technician or a graphicdesigner who merelyassembles and mounts BtwrstUnity (Gesprengte Einheit). I955. Photomontage. preexistingimages. With photomontagethey could call 1I-3/4X II5/8" Institutfur Auslandsbeziehungen,Stuttgart. into questionthe veryways that societyviewed itself. Hoch engagedthe worldof contemporarypolitics and politicalfigures in photomontagessuch as DadaPanorama (I919) and Cut with the KitchenKnife Dada throughthe Last WeimarBeer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (I9I9-20), both of whichwere exhibited in the controver- sial FirstInternational Dada Fairof I920. Each presents recognizablefigures such as FriedrichEbert, president of the GermanReich, and Wilhelm II, the deposedemperor, absorbedwithin a chaoticworld of popularimagery and formalsatire. In Cut with theKitchen Knife, Hoch puts a femalespin on the imageby metaphoricallyequating her ..- .:.4 ' scissors with a kitchen knife, which she used to cut throughthe traditionallymasculine domains of politics and public life. Machineparts and massdemonstrations :t^ E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. connectthe imagesof intellectuals(such as Albert Einstein and KarlMarx), film starsand dancers(Pola Negri and Niddy Impekoven),political pundits, and even the Dada ?r ,'.'.;_ : artists themselves in a vertiginous composition that becameone of the iconsof the Dada movement. Along with her so-calledkitchen knife, H6ch usesthe imagesof modern femininity,especially the sensational "NewWoman," to questionthe complicatedrelationship betweenthe sexesin post-WorldWar I Germany.With her bobbed hair, sleek new fashions, and increasingly frequentappearance on the streetsand in the workplace, this New Woman emergedin Europe in the 1920S as a symbolfor all thatwas fashionableand up-to-datein the metropolis.In manyof her photomontages,Hoch juxta- InzdianDancer: From an Ethnographic Mntsen7n(Indische Tdnzerin: Aus einem ethnographischen posesthese sporty, active women with moderntechnology Museumn).1930. Photomontagewith .iol/8 x 87/8".The Museumof ModernArt. Frances and domestic appliances, creating ironic statements on KeechFund.

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This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:44:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the ambiguitiesand deep conflictsthat accompaniedthe new female featuresof the wooden mask,freezing the dancer'ssensuous perfor- presencein the public realm. manceinto a crudeparody of the shacklesand stereotypes that marked With the gradualdispersal of the Dada artistsin the earlyI92os, the modern-daymedia representation of women. and her breakupwith Hausmannin I922, Hoch enteredan increas- By the end of the I920S, Hoch reapedthe benefitof the increasing inglyexciting period of experimentation.Her friendshipswith artists popularityof photomontage.No longermerely associated with Dada such as KurtSchwitters, Hans Arp and Sophie Tauber-Arp,Laszlo revolt, it became an importantvehicle in the fields of advertising Moholy-Nagy, and Theo and Nelly van Doesburg furthered her and design, which profited from a rising interest in the use of contact with the international photographic montage. For the avant-gardeand theirradical chal- first time, Hoch was publicly lenges to traditional art and acclaimed for her provocative abstraction.Alongside works pub- photomontages, which were in- lished in their magazines and cluded in several international books,such as Schwitters's"Merz" exhibitions, including the 1929 magazine,Arp and 's "Filmand Photo"show, the most TheArt-Isms, and Moholy-Nagy's comprehensiveexhibition to date Bauhausbook -Photogra- of both commercial and avant- phy-Film,H6ch createdcollages of gardephotography and film. colored and embroidery All of this cameto a halt when patterns that pay homage to the !;q,* Adolf Hitler assumed power in geometric formality of the new January1933. Hochand much of internationalmovements of Con- the avant-garde were branded structivismand De Stijl, while at "CulturalBolshevists" and "degen- the same time continuing her erate, and not allowedto exhibit occupationwith traditionalmate- their work publicly.Many of her rials from the world of craft and friends,including Schwitters and handiwork.In the late 1920S and Hausmann,left Germany.Those earlyI930S Hochbecame involved who stayed behind, like Hoch, in a lesbian relationshipwith the werealienated and intimidatedby Dutch poet Til Brugman, with the Nazi politicsof reprisal. whom she lived in the Nether- H6ch's purchase of a house lands from I926 to I929. These and gardenin a suburbof Berlin yearsproved particularlyfruitful in I939, andher brief marriage to for her photomontage work, a Germanbusinessman from 1938 HannahHoch with one of herDada , c. 1925. CourtesyBerlinische Galerie, which delvedinto questionsof the Landesmuseumfur Moderne Kunst, Photographie und Architektur, Berlin. to I944, allowedher to establisha construction of sexual identity distancebetween her personallife and the changingnature of love and relationshipsin seriesentitled and the culturaland politicalterrorism of the Nazis. Photomontages "Love"and "Dancers." from the I930S such as Resignation (c. I930) and Flight (I931) reflect Among the most provocativeand disturbingphotomontages are Hoch's growing concerns for her safety under the Nazi regime. They those collectivelyentitled "Froman EthnographicMuseum," which also anticipate her withdrawal into a world of fantasy and nature, Hbch createdbetween 1925 and 1930. With photographsof female symbolized by her lush garden and her photomontages of strange, body partsattached to those of so-calledprimitive , Hoch surreal landscapes. combinesthe familiarwith the unusual,the Selfwith the Other,in a With the end of the war in I945, artists in Berlin were anxious to powerfulindictment of the displayand fetishizationof the human rebuild the sense of culture and community lost under Nazi dictator- body within a modernconsumer culture. ship, but this restoration was not without its political consequences. In IndianDancer of 1930, for example,Hoch displaysa publicity Divided into four zones by the Occupation forces of England, still of the actressMarie Falconettias Joan of Arc in Carl Theodor France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, Berlin quickly Dreyer'sI928 film ThePassion ofJoan ofArc.A wooden dance mask became the site of intense cold war politics. Art became a tool in the fromCameroon covers the actress'smouth and eye, freezingthe painful ideological split between East and West, with abstractart standing for grimaceof the martyrinto somethingakin to the seductiveglances of a freedom of expression in the capitalist zones and Socialist Realism magazinepinup girl. Joan's crown of strawhas beenreplaced by cutout representing the ideal of a worker's state in the Soviet sector. silhouettesof silverware,changing the symbolof her martyrdominto Hoch fell within the abstract modernist camp centered around one of domesticservitude. With the title IndianDancer Hoch com- the Galerie Gerd Rosen, one of the first private galleries to open in paresthe light, transparentveils of an orientaldancer with the ossified Berlin after the war and one of the leading advocates of abstract and

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This content downloaded from 128.230.234.162 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:44:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Surrealist art in Germany. Her participation in exhibitions at the Rosen Gallery beginning in 1946 and in public discussions of freedom in modern art allowed Hoch to reassert her own artistic voice after years of silence and solitude. Her works of the late I940S and 195os-with their suggestions of natural phenomena and complex abstract interplays of color, form, and texture-mirror Hoch's abiding interest in for- mal construction, naturalscience, and technology. By the mid-i9sos, photomontages such as Burst Unity (I955) benefited from the proliferation of color photographs and experimental photo tech- niques in popular magazines such as Life Inter- national, as well as the influence of American Abstract Expressionism avidly marketed in the international press. With a renewal of interest in Berlin Dada and her inclusion in major Dada retrospectivesin the 7 ~~~~, late I95os and early I96os, Hoch returned to a subject she had not treated since before the war: the media representation of women. Spurred on by the women's movement of the I96os and anti-high art movements such as Fluxus, neo- _ W- -5 SA Dada, and Pop, Hoch once again saw herself as part of an international art community devoted Ir to irony and critique, with all forms of montage and collage again taking center stage. Many of H6ch's photomontages from this period, such as Strange Beauty II (I966) and Homage to Riza Abasi (I963) intentionally recall her work from the 1920S and I930S while engag- ing the latest New Woman, whose image flour- ished amid fashion spreads and media advertisements. In Homage to Riza Abasi, Hoch juxtaposes the hypersexualized body of a belly dancer with the head of an Audrey Hepburn lookalike in an obscure reference to a seven- teenth-century Persianminiaturist named Riza-i- Abbasi. Both the female body and the fashion icon are caricatured in this ironic "homage" to modern femininity. By the I96os Hoch could Homage to Riza Abasi (Hosinage a Riza Abasi). I963. Photomontage. 1378 x 73/16". Institut fir Auslandsbeziehungen, view her subject from a distance, albeit with a StLIttgart. critical awareness born from a lifetime of experi- ence with media representations of women. Produced over five turbulent decades, Hannah Hoch's pho- KristinMakholm is a doctoralcandidate at the Universityof Minne- tomontagesdemonstrate the remarkableability of one individualto sota, whereshe is writing her dissertationon Hannah Hoch. The carve a sense of identity and critique out of the frenzy of modern Photomontagesof Hannah H6ch was organizedby the WalkerArt consumerculture. The biting satiresand jarring formal incongruities Center,Minneapolis, and coordinatedforThe Museum of ModernArt that werethe resultof Hoch'sexpert reconfigurations become part of by CarolynLanchner, Curator, Department of Paintingand . her legacy to us as we continue to weatherthe sensoryoverload of Supportfor the exhibitionwas provided by the National Endowment imagesand experiencesof our own high-techmedia culture. for theArts.

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