Hannah Höch

Poetic, radical, and ironic: Hannah Höch's montages and the visual culture of Modernism

Hannah Höch (18891978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital's vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Höch broke with the traditions of representation and vision. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Höch kept to her artistic means and her poetic-radical imagination, shimmering between social observation and dream world, even in the post-WWII period. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a co-inventor.

Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch's art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch's fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text on photomontage by Hannah Höch, written in 1948, and text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde such as Sergej Eisenstein, Raoul Hausmann, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttman, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, and Dsiga Wertow, have their say, round out this volume.

• A groundbreaking book on Hannah Höch's montages in the context of film and the visual culture of Modernism
• Sheds light for the first time on Hannah Höch's significance as a pioneering artist to confront the industrial age's flood of images
• Richly illustrated, featuring also numerous prints and other documents from Höch's estate, and film stills
• With a text-collage on the history of montage, assembling excerpts by Hannah Höch, Sergej Eisenstein, Raoul Hausmann, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttman, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, and Dsiga Wertow

• Exhibition: Hannah HöchAssembled Worlds at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (November 10, 2023 to February 25, 2024) and at Unteres Belvedere, Vienna (June 21 to October 6, 2024)

  Autorentext

  Stella Rollig ist Generaldirektorin und wissenschaftliche Geschäftsführerin des Belvedere in Wien.

Martin Waldmeier ist Kurator am Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

Nina Zimmer ist Direktorin des Kunstmuseum Bern und des Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

Klappentext

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital's vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Höch broke with the traditions of representation and vision. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Höch kept to her artistic means and her poetic-radical imagination, shimmering between social observation and dream world, even in the post-WWII period. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a co-inventor.

Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch's art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch's fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text on photomontage by Hannah Höch, written in 1948, and text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde such as Sergej Eisenstein, Raoul Hausmann, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttman, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, and Dsiga Wertow, have their say, round out this volume.