Collage, Photomontage and Hannah Hochs Work: Photo Montage Evolution from its Beginning to Present - Essay Example

Collage, Photomontage and Hannah Hoch’s Work: The Evolution of Photo Montage from its Beginning to Present Date Abstract Looking at artwork outside of the context in which it was originally created can often cause one to lose important associations and connections that would have been easily understood by the contemporary audience. In order to gain an appreciation for the brilliance and important influence of artists such as Hanna Hoch, an often overlooked early female artist within the modern movement, it is important to gain an understanding of the artistic theories that were prevalent during her time. To obtain this necessary understanding, this paper intends to investigate the broader theories regarding what was the meaning of art and how it should be used. By understanding the historical context of Modern art, it is possible to trace how Hanna Hoch developed her own artistic approach and made her ideas known. An analysis of one of her artworks demonstrates the ideas she was attempting to convey. This investigation further illustrates how Hoch’s artwork served to influence future artists who also used the medium of photomontage and collage to convey their ideas. Because of Hoch, this particular artistic approach took on a greater cultural and social importance because of the way in which it directly spoke to the major political issues of the day, focusing upon the major hopes and aspirations of the community as Germany underwent profound political change in a short space of time. Although Hoch’s artwork was little understood at the time in which she was working, later audiences who were much more informed regarding the artistic theories and ideas being expressed and not as influenced by the fear of Jewish inferiority and insanity were more able to appreciate the intelligence and sensitivity this artist portrays within her work. Because of this, Hoch was able to inspire numerous other artists working with the medium to continue exploring the political issues of the day by placing images in similar unusual juxtaposition. Thus, the following paper attempts to demonstrate how Hanna Hoch’s artwork grew out of the social and political climate of her time, illustrate how it became a unique expression of her thoughts and ideas and then trace these ideas as they influenced further artists into the future. Diagrammatic Overview Introduction Hanna Hoch Thesis: Following the development of the Dada movement and the use of collage and photomontage will help illustrate the contributions of Hanna Hoch to the greater art world. Background Dada Artists of Dada Hanna Hoch Dadaist school of art Definition Source of name Goals of the movement Photomontage Origin Cubist influences Developing political interests Hoch Influences – women’s suffrage Characteristics of her art Entrance to surrealism Artwork Analysis of an artwork Reception Miscommunication with public Perception of insanity Association with the Jews Inspiration Influence on future artists John Heartfield Characteristics of Heartfield’s work Conclusion Collage, Photomontage and Hannah Hoch Understanding an individual’s artwork as well as their influence on future artists is often more difficult than one might at first imagine. Before artwork such as that created by Hanna Hoch can be fully appreciated, one must have some idea of the artistic theories the artist was building off of, such as the Modernist movement and the ideas of cubism and Dadaism. An analysis of one of her representative works helps to illustrate how her artwork fits within this approach and how it changes it to make her own statement regarding the major issues and theories of her time. With an understanding of her art, then, it becomes possible to discern the many ways in which the artist has influenced art of the future. Following the development of the Dada movement and the use of collage and photomontage will help illustrate the contributions of Hanna Hoch to the greater art world. To some extent growing out of the Modern Cubist movement started by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the beginning of the 1900s, the Dadaists adopted something of an anti-art stance as an artistic movement. According to Michael Delahunt (2007), Picasso and Braque began introducing previously printed materials in their art as early as 1911. “They used letters, fragments of words, musical notes, then significant material elements: sand or sawdust which create relief, and tend to make the picture more physically an object” (Delahunt, 2007). The creation of collages was not long in following and became a mainstay of the Dadaist movement, particularly as it evolved into the concept of photomontage. Artists during this period struggled against the concept that art created spiritual values and frequently used the products of their creative spirit to protest against the First World War. Beginning in France in about 1916, the movement’s progress and development can be seen in context with the Great War, which started in 1914 and was waged for four years. While this artistic movement didn’t start until two years after the war began, about when the populace, artists among them, was beginning to feel the pressure of constant warlike states, it also persisted for a few years after it ended as the populace, again with artists among them, became reconciled to the new world order thus established. The development of this movement is most frequently associated with artists such as Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters and Marcel Duchamp, among other male artists, but less well known is the equally contributive Hannah Hoch. The foundation of the Dada Movement is actually attributed to artists in Zurich, Switzerland and in New York, America. It is described in the Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature as a “nihilistic movement in the arts … that was based on the principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism and the rejection of laws of beauty and social organization” (cited in Buell, 1998). The name of the movement was arrived at with the same lack of reverence as the movement itself, reportedly arrived at by chance and retained because of its childlike associations. One of its chief goals was to undermine the “rational and civilized standards” then in place in the art world by exploring the icons of the old world, placing them in new contexts so as to expose a lack of inherent meaning in the work (Hardin, 2006) and mostly ignoring the call of the easel. Although it began as a protest against the way art was revered and honored, it began taking on more political overtones with its transference, in 1917, to Berlin under the guidance of Raoul Hausmann and his mistress Hannah Hoch. The concept of photomontage was developed and brought into the movement by the combined efforts of Hannah Hoch and her lover Raoul Hausmann. While on vacation in 1918, “they found a technique of engraving which placed photographic portraits of heads of local men away at war atop a generic, uniformed torso” (Finger, 1998). They used this idea and applied it, much like their Cubist predecessors, to place newspaper and magazine advertisements and images in new arrangements, changing the way these images communicated with the world. “The Dadaists adapted the Cubist idea of collage to new purpose, that of making puzzling or strikingly incongruous juxtapositions of images and letters” (Hardin, 2006). Particularly in Germany, the Dadaists focused on breaking conventions in traditional expression, exploring political issues at hand and attempting to address new social issues emerging at the time, such as a burgeoning women’s movement observed occurring in the rest of Europe, an issue in which Hoch, in particular, was able to identify as even within her own group, she experienced marginalization and suppression (Boswell, 1996). Hoch was strongly influenced in her art by the social issues she saw developing throughout Europe during the Great War and afterwards. Through much of Europe, “women were given suffrage, magazines were being published for women, and Hoch was using the epochal time as material for her art. The rigid gender roles are toyed with in a destructive manner, often placing a woman’s head or legs on a male body and vice versa” (Finger, 1998). Her illustrations often depict women as being in closer proximity to the primitive or uncivilized, clearly comparing women’s progress, as a gender, with social progress as a nation and finding the former severely lacking. She seemed to have a strong grasp on the social constraints that still held women back in all fields as she made the conscious decision to pursue a career in applied arts as a more practical career choice. However, her professional position as a designer for dress and embroidery patterns within the same company that published German women’s magazines also provided her with quick access to the types of images she used in her outside artwork. While her early work was cutting and sharp, later images became more humorous, perhaps as a result of the slow assimilation of the Dada movement into the Surrealist camp. The two approaches were based on a more imaginative, dream-like or nightmare-like approach to art in which images portrayed did not necessarily coincide with images likely to be encountered in the natural, waking world, but Surrealism had a wider range of exploration available, easily enfolding Dada into its exploratory embrace. A photomontage created by Hoch around 1930 is a good example of the ways in which she rearranged parts of common images to suggest a deeper meaning behind the image and to make a commentary upon her own society. The image, Dompteuse, is dominated by warm golds and muted reds. The golds are almost orange they are so deep in hue and the are predominantly found on the frame, matting and in the tones of the images Hoch clipped from existing magazines to illustrate her ideas. The background of the image is a muted red with plenty of texture to darken the edges and enclose the subject. The subject of the image is a Dompteuse, which means tamer. The torso of the figure in the image undoubtedly is that of the tamer himself, full of tanned and muscled biceps and decorative clothing. The legs of the figure can only be seen to the knee, wrapped in a brown towel and twisted to the left side of the image as one stands viewing the piece. This portion of the body is androgynous, it is impossible to tell whether this waist and legs were once male or female. The head of the figure is as undoubtedly female as the torso is male. The face of the woman is exquisite, pale white, seemingly cut from Greek marble and relatively passionless as she gazes down at the small strange animal that has been placed at the bottom right of the image. In mixing the sexes in this way, Hoch illustrates her hope that the new woman might have a chance of emerging into society, full of strength and abilities yet retaining her femininity. Within the new world order brought about by the short-lived Weimar Republic, Hoch expresses her wistful hope that there can finally be a return to the unity of the spirit in which there are no ‘male’ or ‘female’ definitions, but instead simply the self, fully integrated and expressive. Unfortunately, the efforts of Hannah Hoch and her male colleagues were often more misunderstood by their contemporaries than appreciated. “Many of the movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Dada were misunderstood by the German people, suffering from economic collapse. The demoralized nation viewed these art forms as intellectual, and highly elitest linking them to the poor condition of the country. This also linked these artists to the ‘supposed international conspiracy of Communists and Jews’” (McAllister, 2001). This ironic twist of fate ended up linking the artists of this and other modern movements with ideas of insanity and anti-social, anti-national affiliation. “The nineteenth-century founders of German psychiatry felt that the Jew was inherently degenerate and more susceptible than the non-Jew to insanity. As Sander Gilman has pointed out, the classifications of ‘degenerate’ and ‘healthy’ appeared for the first time in the late nineteenth century, by the late 1930’s they were fairly standard in discussions about the avant-garde and the traditional” (McAllister, 2001). By the time the Nazis came to power, this form of artwork was considered subversive to the state, placing the lives and works of numerous artists at peril. Despite this, Hoch’s work, as well as that of her contemporaries, managed to inspire future artists to carry forward the concepts of photomontage into new, or at least more accepting, fields. John Heartfield, for example, was an artist of Germany working between the two world wars who helped pioneer the art of the photomontage as a means of critical expression regarding the political situation he saw developing. His art is a social commentary on what he saw happening in Germany, which was moving back toward war and destruction. As a staunch anti-fascist and communist, his creations can be compared with the writings of Karl Marx in terms of exposing political power plays for what they really were and in terms of using his art to communicate something important regarding the world around him. Within the language of his art, Heartfield created photographic symbols for the various political parties. He included such images as clenched fists, raised arms and open hands to show the strong actions and determined nature of the men in the various parties to do what they felt was important. Rather than going out and working to take his own photographs, like Hoch, Heartfield opted to take recognizable photographs from the mainstream press and reassemble them in such a way as to change the meaning of the image to what he envisioned. Most of his images appeared in the magazine Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (Worker’s Illustrated Magazine or AIZ). To make his meanings as clear as possible, Heartfield stuck to a minimalist style, restricting himself to only a few telling images in each piece, thus becoming a father of the modern and postmodern movements. Despite its attempt to prove that art did not convey some form of inherent moralistic convention to its audience, Dada, along with its immediate successor Surrealism, instead proved the opposite. Through its efforts at exploring the relationships between the dream world and reality, the lack of meaning within meaning and the meaning within serendipity, these artists have helped change the way the world views itself. Hannah Hoch, along with her counterparts in Germany, Switzerland, France and America, helped bridge the distance between the hard scientific intellectualism of the Cubist movement to the imaginative and loosely formed connections of Surrealism even as they found a means of exposing the realities of their world as illusion and reality combined. References Boswell, Peter; Makela, Maria & Lanchner, Carolyn. The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1996. Delahunt, Michael. (2007). “Cubism.” Artlex. Available April 29, 2008 from Finger, Missy. (1998). “Book Review.” Dallas Goethe Center. Available April 29, 2008 from < http://www.dallasgoethecenter.org/hannah.htm> Hardin, Mark. (2006). “Dada and Surrealism.” The Artchive. Available April 29, 2008 from Hoch, Hanna. (1930). “Dompteuse.” Collage. Available April 29, 2008 from McAllister, Jennifer. The Degenerate Art Exhibit at the Munich Haus der Kunst. Temple University, 2001. Read More