Hannah Höch
“I would like to
show the world today as an ant sees it and tomorrow as the moon sees it”
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Known
for her political collages and photomontages, Hannah Höch, born as Anna
Therese Johanne Höch, is one of only a few recognised female Dada artists
associated with the movement. While it was a challenging environment for a
female artist in the early part of the twentieth century, Höch demonstrated her
skill, wit, and genius through her art which would later become much more respected
than it was at the time.
In
1917 she became associated with the Berlin Dada group after meeting artist and
writer Raoul Hausmann who would later become her lover. Höch and the group were
notorious for mocking and condemning German culture during World War I with photomontages
being a popular way to do this:
“They
cut up photographs, stuck them together in provocative ways, added drawings,
cut these up too, pasted in bits of newspaper, or old letters, or whatever
happened to be lying around – to confront a crazy world with its own image. The
objects thus produced were called photomontages” (Hans Richter, Dada)
Höch
initially trained at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin studying glass design.
After this time she had a brief break before returning to study graphic arts at
the Royal Museum of Applied Arts under the tutelage of Emil Orlik. She would also
go on to become heavily involved with embroidery, writing a manifesto of modern
embroidery in 1918.
“I
wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate
around all we can achieve”
Fluid
in her sexuality, Höch would have a same sex relationship with the Dutch writer
Til Brugman four years after her relationship with Hausmann before later marrying
and divorcing Kurt Matthies, a businessman and pianist. She would also become close
friends with Kurt Schwitters who is said to have added the H to Hanna to make
her name palindromic.
While
Höch gradually moved away from the Dada movement she will always be closely associated
with Dada, being much appreciated and respected for her work. During her later
years she kept a low profile while living in Berlin where she was visited by the
art historian Dawn Ades in the early 1970s who described Höch "as
interested in nature as she was in art."
This
was also confirmed by Hans Richter who gave a description in his book, Dada:
Art and Anti-Art, of Höch’s lifestyle in the early 1960’s after the heady
days of Dada:
“Hannah
Hoech lives in a little gingerbread house full of ‘twenties periodicals,
pictures and memories, in the midst of a garden luxuriant with flowers, nuts
and apples. There (An der Wildbahn, at one of the remotest corners of West
Belin) she gardens and collects. She slips from one room to another, all of
them crammed with objects from a world that has collapsed around her.”
Sources
Book:
Dada: Art and Anti-Art (Hans Richter)
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