The Dada Movement
Berlin, Cologne
Raoul Hausmann: Tête mécanique 1919-1920. Berlin. Hannah Höch Collection
The Dada movement, formed in Zurich 1916, was a reaction to World War I, its anarchic iconoclasm appealing to the artists George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst. Also a reaction to the horrors of the war was the Neue Sachlichkeit/New Objectivity movement, which expressed the bitter social criticism of George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix.
Raoul Hausmann: Dada siegt!
Richter and Huelsenbeck were responsible for bringing the Dada virus to Berlin where it found a highly favourable culture medium in the little libertarian group formed by Raoul Hausmann, Franz Jung, Johannes Baader, George Grosz, John Heartfield and a dozen young intellectuals more or less recently graduated from Herwarth Walden's Sturm.
Raoul Hausmann: The Art Critic (Der Kunstkritiker - 1919-20)
Hausmann, a founder member of the Berlin Dada group, developed photomontage as a tool of satire and political protest. Although the 'art critic' is identified by a stamp as George Grosz, another member of the group, the image was probably an anonymous figure cut from a magazine. The fragment of a German banknote behind the critic’s neck suggests that he is controlled by capitalist forces. The words in the background are part of a poem poster made by Hausmann to be pasted on the walls of Berlin.
The Berlin movement's originality stemmed from its political militantism: it was involved in the social upheavals and the Spartakist revolution which broke out at the end of the war in the German capital. Its plastic works, ferociously subversive, retain for us the cruel image of the twilight of the bourgeoisie.
George Grosz : Man of Opinion
Hannah Höch was one of the few women artists to participate in the anti-art Dada movement of the early twentieth century. As a printmaker, painter, collagist, and photomontagist, Höch was part of the intellectual renaissance of Weimar Berlin as well as the Berlin Dadaist circle. Her artwork documented the political and social turmoil caused by World War I, as well as the newfound gender issues associated with women earning the right to vote, becoming more financially independent, and acquiring sexual liberation.
Anna Therese Johanne Höch was born in Gotha, Germany, in 1889. She studied graphic arts at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin from 1912 to 1914 until she was recruited to work for the Red Cross during the war. Höch also trained in fabric design and textiles after her time spent in the war, working part time for Ullstein Verlag, Weimar Berlin's largest publishing empire. She created lace tablecloths and needlepoint patterning and most notably had access to the company's catalogues which she used to create her early photomontages. In 1915, Höch met Raoul Hausmann and through him became associated with the Berlin Dadaists. Hausmann and Höch, under the influence of Dadaism, perfected the art of photomontage and used it as satirical propaganda. Höch became the only female to show works at the First International Dada Fair in 1920.
In 1922, Höch ended her relationship with Hausmann and left the Berlin Dadaists. Known for her independent spirit, masculine dress, and bisexual tendencies, Höch then had a relationship with Til Brugman, the Dutch writer and linguist from 1926 to 1929. She continued to produce her own art and champion female rights until the onset of World War II when the Nazi regime banned all artistic movements, claiming them to be "degenerate." Instead of fleeing Berlin, Höch chose inner exile so she could protect her precious artwork and Dada memorabilia. After the war, Höch quietly remained in Berlin and focused on smaller works. She died in 1978 at the age of eighty-nine. The Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective of her work in 1997 to commemorate her contribution to Dada and women's art as a whole. NMWA's collection includes eighteen objects created by Höch.
Ali Printz
Currently an intern in the Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Hannah Höch - Cut With the Kitchen Knife
In Cologne, Dada was the result of a local group's meeting with Hans Arp, messenger of the Zurich movement. The local base got organized right after the end of the war around Max Ernst, who had been previously drawn to Chirico's "metaphysical" painting, and around a communist activist, Johannes Theodor Baargeld.
Under the influence of the Arp-Baargeld-Ernst trio, Cologne became the scene of tremendous activity. For a while the city even turned into the capital of collage, especially of collaborative assemblages like the Fatagaga ("Fabrication de tableaux garantis gazométriques"), mass produced by the "Centrale W/3".
Kurt Schwitters - Tafel Salz (1922)
In Hanover, the Dada spirit was embodied by a single man, Kurt Schwitters, trained under the sign of expressionnism but who, as early as 1918, had renounced figurative games to create a highly personal plastic grammar, substituting all kinds of rubbish found in public garbage dumps for noble pigments. All these cast off materials were transformed by him into admirable compositions in which colours and volumes made mysterious alliances. He called these strange paintings Merzbilder (after the central syllable of Kommerzbank) and named them by numbers in chronological order of their composition.
Poems by Richard Huelsenbeck in English translation by Johannes Beilharz:
http://www.jbeilharz.de/huelsenbeck/rh_poems.html
These poems were first published in the volume Phantastische Gebete (Fantastic Prayers) in 1916 (Collection Dada, Zurich), then reissued in 1920 in an expanded edition with illustrations by George Grosz by Malik Verlag, Berlin.
The translation is based on the text of the 1960 edition published by Arche Verlag, Zurich with a new dedication and preface by Richard Huelsenbeck.
Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (First International Dada Fair), Berlin 1920: photos and a Hausmann painting from tumblr.
