Meanings of nonsense. "New Woman" Hanna Höh: How to come up with one collage, get out of the shadow of her husband and become famous all over the world

One of the most famous women in the community of Dada artists was the German Hannah Höch.

The name of the German artist Hanna Höch sounded loudly in the 20s of the last century - having embarked on the path of Dadaism, she became famous as the leading collage artist of that time. Her work was exhibited alongside paintings and drawings by François Picabia, Max Ernst and Georg Gross at the first international Dada exhibition in 1920. At the same time, Höch worked at the publishing house Ullstein Verlag, glued collages for magazines and lived with the Austrian artist and writer Raul Hausmann, who introduced the girl to the circle of German avant-garde artists.

The UK will be holding its first retrospective, and London's Whitechapel Gallery has done it. She collected about a hundred works by Hannah Höch from museums and private collections around the world, covering her entire career of 60 years - from 1910 to 1970. The exhibition of Hanna Höch, which is timed to coincide with a series of lectures, film screenings and discussions, will be held in London from January 15 to March 23.

One of the main merits of Hanna Höch is the image of the so-called "new woman", which she managed to create in Germany during the First World War. She stood up for freedom in everything and questioned traditional concepts in creativity, relationships and beauty. This layer of her work Whitechapel reveals, showing the series " From an Ethnographic Museum" - collages with female bodies on the subject of gender and racial stereotypes.

Among her famous early works are −High Finance collage from 1923, in which a Dadaist criticizes the relationship between bankers and the military during the European economic crisis. The most famous work of the artist called " Cut With the Kitchen Knife" 1919 in the gallery Whitechapel will not be shown, however, and without it a retrospective Hannah Heh turns out to be extremely large and significant.

Shortly before the Second World War, in 1933, Hannah Heh was banned from artistic activities, and her work was declared "degenerate art" that could not be exhibited anywhere. Only in 1945 did the "thaw" begin for the artist - she was able to return to work again, then, in 1965, to enter the Berlin Academy of Arts, and, finally, to freely create and exhibit her collages in Germany, which Hanna Heh did until her death in 1978.

In the 20s of the last century, when art was turned upside down and turned on its head, when such currents as cubism, futurism, dadaism and other isms appeared, Hanna Höch was a pioneer of photomontage. Hanna has worked with artists and decorators such as George Gross, George Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann.
Only when Richard Huelsenbeck, one of the iconic figures of Dadaism, wrote the history of Dada, he did not even mention the name of Hanna Höch, he "forgot".
The men of that time were used to taking all the laurels for themselves. It is only now that the names of the women who worked side by side with these men are finally beginning to emerge from the shadows.
Gabrielle Munter, Wassily Kandinsky's girlfriend, Sophie Tauber, Jean Arp's wife, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko's colleague, and of course, Frida Kahlo, now more famous than her husband Diego Rivera.
Many years later, Hannah Höh also emerged from the shadows.

Hannah Höch was born in Gotha (Thürigia, Germany) in 1889 in the family of an insurance agent. Hanna's mother was an amateur artist.
At the age of 15, Hannah had to leave school to look after her brothers and sisters.
But in 1912, Hanna continued her studies, she entered the Berlin School of Applied Arts.
Hanna "always had an experimental mind" and was looking for new forms in art.
And Hannah, in her own words, had a "reckless nature." When she met Raoul Hausmann, she fell in love with him not only as an artist, but also as a man. Hausmann was married, but this did not prevent him from entering into a love affair with the young Hannah.

Höch and Hausmann, along with other artists, embraced Dadaist principles with enthusiasm.
Hausmann said that he was led to the discovery of photomontage by chance. One day, he and Hanna saw a strange photograph in which the face of the son of the owner of the boarding house in which they lived was superimposed five times on the faces of other soldiers who surrounded him. This has become one of the most famous dada methods.
But later, when the researchers read Hanna and Raul's letters to each other, it turned out that Hausmann mainly promoted this method, and Hanna did most of the work.
The woman was engaged in routine work, and the man promoted. But there is no doubt that this couple developed the photomontage in tandem.
As such, photomontage has been known since the middle of the 19th century, but the photo artists of that time tried to disguise their manipulations, and Raul and Hanna turned photomontage into conceptual art, the main purpose of which was to stun, shock, evoke emotions.

Hanna Höch and Raul Hausmann

The work of Hannah Höch herself is much more original and interesting than the work of Hausmann, but she had to be content with second roles so as not to injure the fragile ego of her loved one, while he received the lion's share of fame.
But in the end, after two abortions, Hannah offered to leave. In 1922, Höch and Hausmann parted ways.
In 1924, Hannah came to Paris and continued to develop as an artist.
In 1926, Hanna met the writer Til Brugman, with whom she lived and worked for 10 years.

Höch and Brugman

Hanna earned money mainly by working for the Ullstein publishing concern. In particular, she developed patterns for knitting and embroidery in women's magazines.
Thanks to her work in publishing, Hanna had access to various magazines, from which she made clippings for her collages and grouped them by topic.
Hannah Höch's work was dominated by two themes that merged into one story: woman and media. Another big theme in Hanna's work was the question of faith.
The artist parodied the power that printed media had with the help of images (newspapers and magazines increase the influence of the printed word on the reader's brain with the help of illustrations).
In the 1920s, a new mass culture was born, focused on the spectacle - photography. The media appropriated control over the depiction of reality, and therefore over reality itself.
Hanna chose well-known, recognizable by all pictures, connected them, created a new meaning. The associations of her paintings were clear to contemporaries, but not always clear to us, today.
So, one of the topics of fashion magazines was the New Woman, emancipated, liberated, having the right to vote, the main consumer of goods and services. But Hannah in her paintings showed that the woman still has all the housework, it is difficult for her to find a job just as before, men do not consider her equal to themselves, and the public condemns her free disposition.
Höh's photo collages are deliberately sloppy and rough. Hanna deliberately chose this manner, not wanting to smooth out sharp corners.
The media image of beauty, woman and society, the search for one's own individuality, marriage, sexuality, gender relations, the ability to control one's life - most of Hanna's paintings are devoted to these topics.

In the 30s and 40s, Hannah was forbidden to engage in artistic activities. Her works were declared to be degenerate art, they were forbidden to exhibit.
Hanna lived at that time in the suburbs of Berlin and hid her work at the bottom of a dry well.
in 1938 she married the pianist Curt Mattis, with whom she lived until 1944. In 1965, Hannah Höch was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts.
Hanna still lived to see her contribution to the art of the 20th century recognized. In 1976, two major exhibitions of her work were held in Paris and Berlin.

Hanna Höch in her studio in 1976

Hannah met her recognition with the same imperturbability, as once before the neglect and patronizing and even hostile attitude towards her male colleagues.
- Women artists were for them only charming and talented amateurs, whom they denied real professional status. It was difficult to be an artist in Germany 30 years ago, Hanna said.
Hanna Höch died in 1978.

Hanna Höch(real name Johann Höch, German Hannah Hch; 1889-1978) - German artist - Dadaist, master of collage.

Life and art

Johanna Höch was born into the family of an insurance agent, her mother was an amateur artist. Already at the age of 15, the girl was forced to leave school to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. In 1912 she entered the Berlin School of Applied Arts. In 1914, Höch visited a large exhibition of German modern art in Cologne, then studied at the school at the Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin, in the class of Emil Orlik. During this time, she met Raul Hausman and entered into a close relationship with him. Also with Housman, Höch began to develop the artistic direction of photomontage. In 1916-1926, the artist worked for the publishing house Ullstein Verlag, mainly in its magazine department. Thanks to Hausmann, H. Höch in 1917 met the Dadaist artists of Berlin. In 1920 she took part in the First International Dada Exhibition. Beginning in 1920, Höch became a regular participant in the annual exhibitions of the art group November. In the same 1920, Höch and Hausmann went to Prague to establish relations with the Czechoslovak Dadaists.

In 1921, Höch and Hausmann separated. In 1924 she made a trip to Paris. On her way home, the artist visited Piet Mondrian and members of the Dutch art group De Stijl. In 1924, Höch participated in an art exhibition in the USSR, in 1925 - in an exhibition organized by the German Society of Arts (Deutsche Kunstgemeinschaft) in Berlin. In 1926, Höch met the writer Til Brugmann, with whom she lived and worked in The Hague in 1929 and then, until 1936, in Berlin. In 1932 she exhibited her collages in the USA.

In 1933-1945, Hanne Höch was forbidden to engage in artistic activities. Her works were declared to be degenerate art, they were forbidden to exhibit. By 1937, Höch had separated from Brugmann, and in 1938 she married the pianist Curt Mattis, with whom she lived until 1944. In 1965, H. Höch was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts.

The artistic heritage of H. Höch is very diverse and also belongs to various trends in art. In 1996, the State of Berlin established the Hanna Höch Prize for excellence in the arts, now funded by 15,000 euros.

Literature

Jula Dech: Hannah Hch. Schnitt mit dem Kchenmesser. Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-23970-2.
Ursula Peters, Andrea Legde: Moderne Zeiten. Die Sammlung zum 20. Jahrhundert. (= Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergnge im Germanischen Nationalmuseum; Bd. 3). Nrnberg 2000, insbesondere S. 112-120 passim
Hannah Hch, Gunda Luyken: Album. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1427-8. (Hchs Materialsammlung aus den Jahren 1925/26)
Jula Dech: Sieben Blicke auf Hannah Hch. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-89401-401-6.
Wolfgang Maier-Preusker: In: Buch- und Mappenwerke mit Grafik des Deutschen Expressionismus. A.-Kat. fr Hansestadt Wismar. Wien 2006, ISBN 3-900208-37-9.
Hanna Hch. Aller Anfang ist DADA! Hrsg. v. d. Berlinischen Gallery. Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7757-1919-3.
Hanna Hch: Bilderbuch. mit einem Nachwort von Gunda Luyken. The Green Box, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-908175-35-3.
Alma-Elisa Kittner: Visuelle Autobiographien. Sammeln als Selbstentwurf bei Hannah Hch, Sophie Calle und Annette Messager. Transcript, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89942-872-8.
Hanna Hch: Picture Book. with an essay by Gunda Luyken. The Green Box, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941644-13-7.

1 2 3 4 German National Library, Berlin State Library, Bavarian State Library, etc. Record #118551833 // General Regulatory Control - 2012-2016.
1 2 data.bnf.fr: open data platform, open data platform - 2011.

Hanna Höch

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Hanna Höch(real name Johann Höch, German. Hannah Hoch; 1889-1978) - German artist - Dadaist, master of collage.

Life and art

Johanna Höch was born into the family of an insurance agent, her mother was an amateur artist. Already at the age of 15, the girl was forced to leave school to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. In 1912 she entered the Berlin School of Applied Arts. In 1914, Höch visited a large exhibition of German modern art in Cologne, then studied at the school at the Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin, in the class of Emil Orlik. During this time, she met Raul Hausman and entered into a close relationship with him. Also with Housman, Höch began to develop the artistic direction of photomontage. In 1916-1926, the artist worked for the Ullstein Verlag publishing house, mainly in its magazine department. Thanks to Hausmann, H. Höch in 1917 met the Dadaist artists of Berlin. In 1920 she takes part in First International Dada Exhibition. Beginning in 1920, Höch became a regular participant in the annual exhibitions of the art group November. In the same 1920, Höch and Hausmann went to Prague to establish relations with the Czechoslovak Dadaists.

In 1921, Höch and Hausmann separated. In 1924 she made a trip to Paris. On her way home, the artist visited Piet Mondrian and members of the Dutch art group De Stijl. In 1924, Höch participated in an art exhibition in the USSR, in 1925 - in an exhibition organized by German Society for the Arts (Deutsche Kunstgemeinschaft) in Berlin. In 1926, Höch met the writer Teal Brugman, with whom she lived and worked in The Hague in 1929, and then, until 1936, in Berlin. In 1932 she exhibited her collages in the USA.

In 1933-1945, Hanne Höch was forbidden to engage in artistic activities. Her works were declared as degenerate art, they were forbidden to exhibit. By 1937, Höch had separated from Brugmann, and in 1938 she married the pianist Kurt Mattis, with whom she lived until 1944. In 1965, H. Höch was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts.

The artistic heritage of H. Höch is very diverse and also belongs to various trends in art. In 1996, the State of Berlin established a 15,000 euro funded Hanna Höch Award for outstanding achievement in the arts.

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Literature

Jula Decch: Hannah Hoch. Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser. Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-23970-2.
Ursula Peters, Andrea Legde: Moderne Zeiten. Die Sammlung zum 20. Jahrhundert.(= Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im Germanischen Nationalmuseum; Bd. 3). Nürnberg 2000, insbesondere S. 112-120 passim
Hannah Höch, Gunda Luyken: Album. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1427-8. (Höchs Materialsammlung aus den Jahren 1925/26)
Jula Decch: Sieben Blicke auf Hannah Höch. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-89401-401-6.
Wolfgang Maier-Preusker: In: Buch- und Mappenwerke mit Grafik des Deutschen Expressionismus. A.-Kat. fur Hansestadt Wismar. Wien 2006, ISBN 3-900208-37-9.
Hanna Hoch. Aller Anfang ist DADA! Hrsg. v. d. Berlinischen Gallery. Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7757-1919-3.
Hanna Höch: Bilderbuch. mit einem Nachwort von Gunda Luyken. The Green Box, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-908175-35-3.
Alma Elisa Kittner: Visuelle Autobiography. Sammeln als Selbstentwurf bei Hannah Höch, Sophie Calle und Annette Messager. Transcript, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89942-872-8.
Hanna Hoch: Picture Book. with an essay by Gunda Luyken. The Green Box, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941644-13-7.

An excerpt characterizing Höch, Hanna

And now she, his dear and only wife, appeared to him the way he always remembered her, and gave him a wonderful chance - she gave forgiveness, and in the same way, she gave life ...
It was only then that I truly understood what Stella's grandmother had in mind when she told me how important this chance I gave to the "departed" was... Because, probably, there is nothing more terrible in the world than to be left with the unforgiven guilt of the offense and pain inflicted on those without whom our whole past life would not make sense...
I suddenly felt very tired, as if this most interesting time spent with Stella had taken away the last drops of my remaining strength from me ... I completely forgot that this “interesting”, like everything interesting before, had its own “price”, and therefore, again, as before, I also had to pay for today's “walking” ... Unfortunately, I haven't had much time yet...
Don't worry, I'll teach you how to do it! - Stella said cheerfully, as if reading my sad thoughts.
- What to do? - I did not understand.
“Well, so you can stay with me longer. - Surprised by my question, the little girl answered. - You're alive, that's why it's difficult for you. And I will teach you. Would you like to take a walk where “the others” live? And Harold will be waiting for us here. - Slyly wrinkling her little nose, the girl asked.
- Right now? I asked very uncertainly.
She nodded... and we suddenly "fell" somewhere, "leaked" through the "star dust" shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and found ourselves in another, completely different from the previous, "transparent" world...
* * *

Oh angels!!! Look, mommy, Angels! – unexpectedly squeaked near someone's thin voice.
I still could not come to my senses from the unusual "flight", and Stella was already sweetly twittering something to a little round girl.
– And if you are not angels, then why do you sparkle so much?.. – sincerely surprised, the little girl asked, and immediately squealed enthusiastically again: – Oh, ma-a-amochki! What a handsome man he is!
It was only then that we noticed that Stella's last "work" - her most amusing red "dragon" - "failed" with us...

Svetlana at age 10

“Is... what is it?” - the little girl asked with a breath. - Can I play with him? .. He will not be offended?
Mom apparently mentally straightened her severely, because the girl was suddenly very upset. Tears welled up in warm brown eyes and it was clear that a little more - and they would flow like a river.
- Just don't cry! Stella asked quickly. “Do you want me to do the same for you?”
The girl's face instantly lit up. She grabbed her mother's hand and squealed happily:
“Do you hear, Mommy, I didn’t do anything wrong and they are not angry with me at all!” Can I have one too?.. I really will be very good! I promise you very, very much!
Mom looked at her with sad eyes, trying to decide how to answer correctly. And the girl suddenly asked:
“Have you seen my daddy, kind luminous girls?” He disappeared with my brother...
Stella looked at me questioningly. And I already knew in advance what she would offer now ...
“Do you want us to eat them?” – as I thought, she asked.

She criticized fashion magazines and the unattainable ideal of beauty, fought for women's rights and came up with a collage ... at the beginning of the 20th century. Her name was forgotten by fellow artists in their memoirs, and the Nazis sought to destroy her work. For sixty years, Hanna Höch has been creating, rebelling and creating a new female art that celebrates the modern woman - free from rules and prohibitions.

At the turn of the century, the Dada art movement was born in Europe. It did not last long, but determined the development of European art for many years to come. Dada artists advocated a departure from all aesthetics and all meaning, spoke of the emptiness and irrationality of culture, created crazy posters from newspaper clippings, combined images of advertising with caricature drawings, exhibited chairs or plumbing as objects of art. Dadaism was in many ways a "male movement", women were assigned the role of models and inspirers, but in reality everything was different. At the turn of the century, women gained their artistic language and the power to express themselves through art. One of the brightest representatives of Dada was Hannah Höch, the first feminist artist whose wild and rough collages directly related to the position of women in society. However, Richard Huelsenbeck, who wrote the history of Dada, forgot - or did not want to - mention Hanna and her contribution to the development of the movement.

Hanna Heh was born into the family of an insurance agent and an amateur artist. It was her mother who showed Hanna the example that she followed all her life. Despite having to leave school at the age of fifteen to look after her younger siblings, Hanna was soon able to attend major contemporary art exhibitions and continue her studies in an art class at the Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin.

Hannah called herself reckless. She really was a kind of impressionable and addicted. Having met Raoul Hausmann, a Dadaist artist, she fell in love with him at first sight. Hausmann was married, but this did not stop him, and he reciprocated Hanna. Together they came up with an art movement they called "photomontage", although it was technically a collage. It happened like this: Höch and Hausmann lived in a boarding house, and one day they noticed a strange photograph kept by the owner - the face of his son, posing in military uniform, was superimposed several times on the faces of other soldiers. The artists were so impressed with this filming defect that they decided to use it as a creative method.

It is known that most of the collages were made by Hanna, Hausmann preferred to "work with the language" - to promote, promote, make acquaintances. The rebel artists, who spoke boldly about politics and morality, held very traditional views on the place of women in society. “Women artists were just charming lovers for them,” Hannah said of her male colleagues. However, it was the relationship with Hausmann that opened the world of contemporary German art for her, where Hanna felt like a fish in water. She took part in many Dada exhibitions, traveled to Prague with Hausmann to meet Czech Dada artists.

Hanna did not seek to come to the fore as an artist, protecting the feelings of her partner, but her patience came to an end after the second abortion. They parted, and Hanna left for Paris, where she continued her artistic experiments. She had a chance to exhibit works in the USSR and the USA. A few years after breaking up with Hausmann, she met the writer Teel Brugman, with whom she lived and worked for a decade. Together with Brugman, Hanna visited anthropological museums, which allowed the artist to introduce motifs of primitive primitive art into her collages.

Hanna, who was not afraid of work since childhood, found a way to monetize her artistic talents. She worked for a publishing concern, completing a wide variety of orders - and even embroidery designs for women's magazines.
This work was very important for her work, not only because the artist, contrary to popular belief, should not be hungry. It was at the publishing house that Hanna gained access to various magazines, defective pages and photographs, which she saved and systematized to create collages.

"Fashion Show", Hannah Höh.

Hanna Heh was interested in the influence of newspapers and magazines on human perception - newspaper propaganda, the power of advertising over consumer behavior. In her works, she directly touched the image of a woman in the media and reality, the social role of a woman. She rebelled against the perception of a woman as a beautiful object and a tool for serving men, fulfilling men's whims. She mixed images of women from magazines and classical art with photographs of primitive figurines, distorted proportions, cut faces, creating caricatured and frightening images.

Hanna was fascinated by the New Woman (as she called the heroines of her collages) - independent, courageous, liberated. But at the same time, the artist realized that all the words about “modern women” are lies, because it is women who are responsible for all the housework and raising children, women are forced to support and inspire men instead of developing themselves, women are viewed as a commodity, condemned for excessive or “wrong” sexuality, subjected to violence. Today, her art is called truly feminist. It was Hannah Höch who was one of the first artists who spoke about the problems of women through creativity.

Hanna Höch's photo collages were not "beautiful" in the usual sense - on the contrary, they challenged beauty, questioned beauty. Photomontage was known to the photographers of that time, but they tried to make the traces of their intervention invisible - like retouchers today. Hanna, as it were, "opened", dissected the work of the editor. She brought to the limit all the bumps, all the oddities, all the accidents. She worked deliberately roughly, without softening the corners and emphasizing the unnaturalness of the created images.

"New woman

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, Hanna's work was classified as "degenerate art", and she herself was forbidden to engage in creativity. During those difficult years, Hannah hid her collages at the bottom of a dried-up well in the suburbs of Berlin, saving them from destruction by Nazi censorship.

The artist died in 1978 at the age of eighty-eight, having achieved international recognition. In the 1990s, the Hanna Hech Prize for outstanding achievements in the arts was established in Germany.

And another amazing woman from the world of artists.