Hannah Höch’s work, “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”/ “Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauch-kulturepoche Deutschlands” (1919)
Have you ever imagined what the photo-collage was like before the era of Smartphones Apps? The collage technique has been known in painting since around 1911, in Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso’s paintings. A Collage is a visual representation that uses an assembly of materials, (such as newspaper clippings, ribbons, hand-made paper, other artwork, photograph) that is glued in a solid supporting surface. It is not to be confused with photomontage as a constructed image from some negative photographs in the darkroom.
The right top corner of Hannah Höch’s work
Hannah Höch’s Collage
The intersect of painting and photography can be found in Hannah Höch’s work, “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”/ “Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauch-kulturepoche Deutschlands” (1919). Hannah Höch is a German painter and photographer. She was the only woman member in the Berlin Dada Movement.
The bottom corner of Hannah Höch’s work
In this collage, Hannah Höch uses newspaper clips, text, and photographs that are arranged on a thick paper/Karton. It depicts various things, from Kaiser Wilhelm II, machines, scientific invention, minister, hat, map, woman, the words of ‘dada’ to Einstein. How to “read” this collage?
I borrow James Fox’s explanation (in ‘The Age of the Image’ BBC series). The top right corner suggests masculinity, which is shown by the Weimarer Bierbauch/ Weimar beer-belly brigade (paramilitary group), Kaiser Wilhelm II, hats, cogs, wheel, airplane, and guns. Meanwhile, the bottom corner implies the struggle of females, that is marked by the map of all the countries in Europe that already give women voting rights, small self-photograph of Hannah, portrait of a woman and woman body with a man’s head.
Other important clips are the photograph of Karl Marx, Lenin, Einstein, and also ‘dada’ text. Einstein has a big proportion in this collage, as he becomes an icon of the revolutionary paradigm in physics. ‘Dada’ is an art movement that emerged in the First World War era to criticize the horrors and folly of the war. From all over elements, Hannah Höch seems to say about the effort to revolutionize the status-quo power.
Photo of Einstein in Hannah Höch’s work
This work was made in 1919 when Germanyencountered inflation, food shortages, assassinations, communist and nationalist uprisings. This chaos and situation was reflected in Hannah Höch’s work. This work is an important milestone both in the image-making technique and voicing social commentary by disruptive image.
James Fox’s explanation on Hannah Höch’s work (BBC Age of the Image)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWaKo1NPCDM