Twentieth Century German Photomontage and Naturalism - Assignment Example

Running Head: German Photomontage In what ways did German Photomontage in the 1920’s and 1930’s break with the conventions of naturalism, and why wasthis so? [Name of the writer] [Name of the institution] In what ways did German Photomontage in the 1920’s and 1930’s break with the conventions of naturalism, and why was this so? In Germany during the 1920s, there was a wave οf mass media images οf the so-called New Woman. These images were seductive in their depiction οf modern women as having greater mobility and sexual freedom. They were also identified as consumers οf the products οf a modern industrialized society. Paradoxically, the reality for the New Woman included entrapment in low-paying jobs and subjection to male-dominated hierarchies. Hannah Hoch looked at these contradictions and used them to construct a number οf fractured, disturbing photomontages which simultaneously expressed the conflicting realities οf pleasure, anger, confidence, and anxiety. Hoch was raised in a conventional, middle-class, small-town family. She moved to Berlin during World War I to study art and work for a womens magazine. It was during these years that she became a member οf Berlin Dada. She showed her works regularly with the Dada group but did not establish an international reputation as an artist until after the Dada movement had fallen apart. Cut With The Kitchen Knife includes more than 150 illustrations οf works Hoch created during 1918-1933, the Weimar years. Hoch assembled her montages by selecting photographs οf women from illustrated print sources and juxtaposing them with fragments οf scenes from Weimar and German colonial society. Readers will be intrigued by the surprising even shocking compositions which combine the pleasure οf viewing mass media images with critical, even destructive feelings about the subject matter. Maud Lavin offers both interpretation and critical analysis οf these montages. (Freud 1955, 145-72) Unless youre very knowledgeable, German art in the twentieth century has been done by men, and German women in the twentieth century have been reduced to the equation Woman=Nature, to child-like whores or to old whores, or the scary, brittle, maneating New German Woman. Masks. What a delight to discover the work οf Hannah Hoch (1889-1978). The Walker Art Center has mounted an exhibition οf her photomontages which will travel from there to the Museum οf Modern Art and to the Los Angeles County Museum οf Art. The Photo-montages οf Hannah Hoch is the catalogue for the exhibition. "Photomontage" (associated with the German word montieren, to assemble or to fit,) was used by the Berlin Dadaists to describe their piecing together οf photographic and typographic sources, usually cut from the printed mass media. The Dadaists enjoyed the mechanica--and proletarian--connotations οf the term and used it to distinguish their work from Cubist collage. Although Hannah Hoch worked in other media--useful black and white reproductions οf her drawings and oil paintings accompany the text--all her work contained the elements she perfected in the photomontages she made for nearly sixty years. (Burgin 1982, 177-216) The obligatory scholarly essays describing Hochs life and work are inoffensive and useful But the colour plates are glorious. One hundred and nine reproductions are accompanied by a brief bit οf text commenting on a play οf words in the tide οf a work or providing an historical detail or biographical sketch οf a ballerina or industrialist or describing how the original mass media sources were manipulated by the artist. This detail, small colour reproductions οf the original sources, conveys the creativity οf the curators οf this catalogue. Showing how a reproduction οf drapery from an advertisement was cut, fumed on its side, and conjoled into becoming waves on the surface οf water is magic. Somehow words, the right words, said about a work οf art make the work οf art visible. Magic. The Photomontages, naturally, conveys the same old sad story οf the boys refusing to acknowledge that a girl had played in their tree house. The Dadaists with whom Hoch first worked refused to exhibit their work if hers was shown. One collaboration reproduced in the catalogue suggests a possible reason. Raoul Hausmann, an artist with whom Hoch had a long relationship, created the left page and Hoch the right οf a double spread οf the first issue οf Der Dada in 1919. Hausmanns page, exciting and energetic images amid jagged text, was connected by a piston rod to Hochs page, a formal, composed rectangle surmounting a block οf left-justified text. (Hall 1928) His was unmoored. Modern advertising. Hers, I thought, was another example οf a woman being timid, correct. But I was wrong. The next day I remembered hers, but could not conjure his to mind. The rectangle from which she never deviated was for her the sonnet form. I slowly understood: she was making poetry. Every element within the frame is upended, detached from its original context, and perfectly placed. Like a sonnet, no element is other than it must be. Many οf Hochs lovely, haunting, evocative photomontages οf women date from the beginning οf her nine-year relationship with the Dutch poet Til Brugman in 1926. Impossible to describe, they are mysterious, joyful, sexy, a more accurate rendering οf the New German Woman. (Freud 1905) Hoch was among the few artists with unacceptable styles--"cultural Bolshevists"--who chose not to leave Germany in the 1930s. It is not difficult to see why Hochs work was unacceptable: Mens heads surmounting babies bodies; brides with womens bodies, babies heads; grids supporting machine parts called "Design for the Memorial to an Important Lace Shirt"; ethnographic images given glasses and mismatched eyes; compound images οf women, alluring but not coy or pleasing, parts οf faces provided by reproductions οf Blacks; nature depicted as the simultaneous surreal cohabitation οf prehistoric beasts and upended Zeppelins against a red sky unseen before space travel. Following the war, artists were compelled to choose between representation and abstraction. (Foucault 1980) Hoch lifted the abstract elements from her previous work, distilled and purified them. It was with her i abstractions that I discovered that she was making poetry. I found the work exciting. Discovering someone who is deeper than I am, who can pull me through mystery to understanding, is exciting. (Baumgardt 17-27) Though she was also a painter, German artist Hannah Hoch is remembered primarily for helping to develop the modern art οf photomontage--a form οf collage which involves cutting illustrations from magazines and newspapers and reassembling them into new, often humorous and politically charged images. The current travelling exhibition οf her work, The Photomontages οf Hannah Hoch, affords Americans their very, first opportunity to view together works that span the artists lifetime. The curators have organized the exhibit in the context οf Hochs personal life as well as the political and social history οf 20th-century Germany-and the result is extraordinary. Anna Therese Johanne Hoch was only 23 years old in 1912 when she moved to Berlin from the small town οf Gotha to study art. She was working primarily as a designer οf embroidery patterns in 1915 when she met and began a stormy seven-year love affair with the married Czech artist and writer Raoul Hausmann. (Weininger 1906) By the end οf World War I, Hausmann and Hoch found themselves at the center οf a circle οf avant-garde artists known as the Berlin Dada group. "Dada" was a nonsense word that reflected the groups distrust οf the cultural and political institutions that characterized German society in 1918, especially its corrupt postwar Weimar government. New printing technologies developed about the same time made the mass production οf illustrated magazines possible, and photomontage, with its ability to turn common-place magazine images upside down, seemed especially suited to the Dadaists desire to make art that questioned traditional vaines. (Lacan 1977, 11-52) Hochs most impressive work from this early phase οf her career, Cut with the Kitchert Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch οf Germany, reflects not only her distaste for Reich President Friedrich Ebert and the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm, but her concern about what she considered to be the corrupting masculine influence in German public life--an arena that excluded most women. In this work, the scissors οf the photomontage artist have become the silent housewifes kitchen knife. Hoch, as the only female member οf the macho Berlin Dada group, often found herself patronized by the movements more radical artists. By 1922, Hoch broke away from Hausmann and the Dadaists, and her photomontages from that time show her growing interest in the ambiguous role οf the so-called "new woman" οf Weimar Germany. Hoch began a new phase in her career in 1925. For the next five years she created the disturbing, yet often humorous, series οf photomontages collectively titled From an Ethnographic Museum. In many οf these works, Hoch married primitive images from non-Western cultures with the bodies οf European women, and set them on what appear to be museum pedestals, inviting viewers to contemplate not only the role οf women in society, but their own fears about "primitive" and foreign cultures. Her criticism οf racial prejudice, as perpetrated by the Nazi party (seen in such works as 1931s Flight, in which a wing-headed pursuer resembling Adolf Hitler swoops down upon a frightened victim), placed Hoch in jeopardy when Hitler came to power in January 1933. She was labelled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis, but unlike many οf her compatriots, Hoch chose not to flee Germany. Instead, she moved to the suburbs οf Berlin, married, and kept a low profile by directing her artists eye inward. The photomontages on view from this period expand the limits οf the medium as they take on the colouration and abstraction found in modern painting. Hochs work continued in this vein until the 1960s, when the early stirrings οf the womens movement once again ignited her passion for exploring sexual attitudes. She began to create witty photomontages on this theme that evoke the playful spirit οf the pop art movement. By the late 60s, failing eyesight put an end to Hrchs career. She died in 1978 at the age οf 89. The current exhibition οf her work, which was organized and first presented by the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis before travelling to the Museum οf Modern Art in New York, can now be seen (if you hurry.) at its last venue, the Los Angeles County Museum οf Art in Los Angeles, through September 14, 1997. An excellent catalogue οf the show, published by the Walker Art Centre, features essays on Hochs work and is illustrated with colour plates. (Freud 1961, 169-177) Plus, as a special treat, it includes fascinating black-and-white source photos οf many οf the original illustrations Hoch cut apart to craft her provocative works οf art. While these visual annotations demystify, the process οf making a photomontage, they also illuminate the brilliance οf Hochs artistic eye as she selected mundane images and reassembled them into rare and profound works οf art. There is a gratifying modesty in how "The Photomontages οf Hannah Hoch"[1] at the Museum οf Modern Art has been properly, if not perfectly, scaled to its subject. Hannah Hoch (1889-1978) was the sole woman artist associated with Berlin Dada, a group known for its strident politics and anti-art stance. In contrast to renowned Dadaists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, H/Sch has been, until recently, a modernist footnote. At the time οf her death in 1978, she was remembered as the "Bobhaired Muse οf the Mens Club" and, most infamously, the "good girl" οf Dada, a moniker given to her by the artist Hans Richter. The exhibition at MOMA attempts to correct this dubious recognition by spotlighting the work for which she is best known, and though the hundred or so photomontages on view are as small in scope as they are in size, they are not negligible. While "The Photomontages οf Hannah Hoch" does not reveal a major talent, it does show us why Hoch is an artist worth considering in the first place. This is, οf course, seeing the glass half full rather than half empty. Yet at a time when marginal artists are hyped with claims that have little to do with art, "The Photomontages οf Hannah Hoch" is, as an exhibition οf pictures, the equivalent οf straight talk. Indeed, the curators focus--which, by its very nature, excludes Hochs paintings, drawings and watercolours--involves something resembling connoisseurship. Admittedly, the resuscitation οf Hochs career owes much to feminist art history, and the catalogue underscores (in the jargonistic parlance οf the times) her "poignant commentaries on the strains and confusions caused by culturally exacted gender performances." One doesnt have to be an ideologue to find the "good girl" tag belittling, but politics is never a good reason for salvaging (or judging) art. If a few reputable artists have been rescued from oblivion because οf their race, gender, or what have you, then we are less blessed than lucky. So it is with Hannah Hoch. Just how much the revitalization οf Hochs reputation is due to extra-aesthetic matters can be divined from the attention bestowed upon the large collage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch οf Germany (1919-20). With its snipped and jumbled photos οf politicians, artists and entertainers, Cut with the Kitchen Knife is a bona fide artifact οf the Dadaist epoch. The title alone is fraught with enough symbolism to launch a dozen thesis papers. (Cut with the Kitchen Knife did, in fact, serve as the title οf a study οf the photomontages.) In her catalogue essay, Maria Makela pinpoints the works imagery--from Marx and Lenin to Pola Negri and Kathe Kollwitz to a map οf Europe that identifies the countries in which women were able to vote--and makes a kind οf sense οf it, though scant attention is paid to it as a work οf art. And, as such, Cut with the Kitchen Knife is a mess. Physically, it has not held up well; the pieces discoloured and mottled surfaces suggest a work that once had graphic power. As it is, Hochs composition--or, should one say, non-composition--is diffuse. Portions οf it are funny, but they dont coalesce into anything consequential; it lacks the basic armature a good joke requires. What seems a jolting piece οf propaganda is, finally, a dissipated rebus. The appeal οf Cut with the Kitchen Knife to contemporary taste may be precisely this fragmentary quality. There are, it would seem, few things more validating for a confused culture than a confused work οf art. Cut with the Kitchen Knife is the largest and most overtly political οf Hochs photo-montages. Yet both its scale and "content" were alien to her sensibility. Most οf the collages are small--"intimate" is not an inappropriate word--and without the vitriol typical οf Berlin Dada. A German critic described the photomontages as being "skeptical in an almost tender way" and this seems about right. For Hoch never took great interest in expounding an anti-art agenda. "A clear aesthetically resolved statement" (as the artist had it) was important to Hoch. It is noteworthy that not until 1929, almost ten years after the First International Dada Fair, did she feel confident in exhibiting her photomontages publicly. During this time Hoch was not completely convinced οf photomontages viability as an art form and exhibited, albeit sporadically, only her paintings and textile designs. Nonetheless she found within its "traditionless" parameters an artistic and imaginative freedom absent from her other work. Although the philosophy οf Dada didnt altogether jibe with Hochs world view, the movement itself was an essential catalyst for her art. She clearly benefited, artistically if not emotionally, from being in proximity to the "mens club." Hochs vision, however, was not fueled by anger or despair. What emerges from the photomontages is a sly and not ungentle intellect with a deft eye for design and a love for absurdist disjunction. She was a quirky miniaturist at the beginning οf what seemed, at the time, an impossibly big century. The century turned out to be bigger (and more impossible) than anyone in 1920 could have predicted, and if some οf Hochs collages seem dated it isnt due to yellowing newsprint alone; the fractured juxtapositions οf scale, image, and text in the photomontages have long been a part οf our cultural life. (Hansen 1983, 147-84) The artist (and Hochs one-time lover) Raoul Hausmann, writing in 1931, griped that photomontage was rapidly being shanghaied by commercial and political interests. In this respect, he was prophetic--more than he could ever imagine, in fact. If the edge in Hochs work has dulled a bit, her portrayal οf the new century--dizzying and open to possibility and paradox--is often still exhilarating. It is impossible, for instance, not to read the rush οf overlapping images in The Beautiful Girl (1919-20) or Untitled (1921), with its glamour girl spinning atop a turntable, as anything but paeans, albeit acerbic ones, to a world in flux. References Lacan, Jacques, "Desire and the Interpretation οf Desire in Hamlet" [1959], Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977): 11-52. Baumgardt, Manfred, "Das Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft und die Homosexuellen-Bewegung in der Weimarer Republik," Eldorado 17-27. Foucault, Michel, The History οf Sexuality, vol. I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vinatge, 1980). Hansen, Miriam, "Silent Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?" New German Critique 29 (Spring/Summer 1983): 147-84. Weininger, Otto, Sex and Character, trans. and 6th ed. οf Geschlecht und Charakter (London: Heinemann, 1906). Magnus Hirschreid, Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes (Berlin: Louis Marcus, 1914). Hall, Radclyffe, The Well οf Loneliness (1928; London: Virago, 1984). Freud, Sigmund, "Fetishism," The Standard Edition XXI, James Strachey, ed. (1927; London: Hogarth, 1961) 169-77. Freud, Sigmund, "The Psychogenesis οf a Case οf Homosexuality in a Woman," The Standard Edition XVIII, James Strachey, ed. (1920; London: Hogarth, 1955) 145-72. Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory οf Sexuality (1905; London: Norton, 1967) 95. Burgin, Victor, "Photography, Phantasy, Function," Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982) 177-216. Read More