ART 125/FIST 318 Hannah Hoch's Gestalt Effects

 

Hannah Höch, Grotesk, 1963, photomontage, 9 7⁄8 x 6 5⁄8".

 

The principal of Gestalt, defined as 'an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts', was a popular concept used to better understand how humans perceive environments in the early twentieth century. Hannah Hoch (1889 – 1978) was a queer German Dada artist who used this idea to create collages that often create ambiguous juxtapositions.  Höch, has been identified by art historians as one of the most under recognized and under-rated female artists of the 20th century.  

Hannah Höch, Watched, 1925.

 

 Here we have an armed guard, whose head appears to be a simple egg, watching over an abstracted fabric flower, that looks a bit like a giant brain. Certainly we can speculate on what this combination of visual elements may imply, but the artist's intent isn't entirely obvious, and the viewer has to resort to associative logic to see, or feel, what this really may be.

Even when the artist's message has clear intent we are left with much to decode...

Hannah Höch,  

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimer Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-1920

Höch's most well-known artwork, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimer Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-1920, uses the medium of collage to critique the political chaos in Europe After WWI.  The video below explains the social and political context behind this iconic Dadaist work. It also identifies the various figures in the composition and decodes a lot of the meaning behind the imagery Höch uses.  It is important to think about how this collage was constructed from commonly available printed materials which were then manipulated in a way that transcends each individual piece itself and exemplifies the fragmented political moment in which Höch lived.

An additional layer of meaning is evident in the title of the piece, Cut with the Kitchen Knife... The use of a kitchen knife as art-making tool is a purposeful statement critiquing the marginalized role of women in art and in society at the time.  Many men involved in the Dada movement at the time often expressed opinions about gender equality in theory, but in practice actually did nothing to support or promote the women artists associated with the male-dominated group.