 |
| Hannah Hoch: Cut With The DADA Kitchen Knife Through The Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany: 1919 |
Once the Great War had started, it left a destructive path in the European area. Many artists and poets left to escape the destruction the war was creating, and in turn started a new artistic movement because of the war; Dada. Dada was essentially "created to address the slaughter and moral question of war" (Stockstad 1037) as well as "mocked the senselessness of rational though and even the foundations of modern society because of how thoughtlessly life was discarded in the trenches" (Stockstad 1037). Dada was also the "apparent collapse of bourgeois cultural values (a collapse displayed by the barbarism and destruction of war" (Powerpoint Lecture 8). However, with the Dada movement started a new era of art. This art mocked and ridiculed other art as well as society and government, no topic was off limits. In the image above, Dadaist Hannah Hoch was very active with the "women's movement." Hoch was also the one female amongst the primarily male Berlin Dada group. Her artwork took words and images for other magazines, posters, and photos in order to convey a message. This message was an angry message that criticized society and government for not seeing women for their real potential and instead seeing women "as merely conjuring up beer and sandwiches" (Stockstand 1039).
In all honesty this is art, just a very different almost abstract for of art. The images the compose her art work show guns, and a very depressing state of work conditions and life and display words like "die" within it. This is art because this type of art, Dada, was composed of mocking how society saw things. Her collage incorporates an angry tone that is easily conveyed, yet the pictures all show different images, leaving the viewer to see the full picture of what Hoch was angry about. In many pictures on the collage their are female bodies, but they are portrayed with a males face. This shows a degrading demeanor for men, and also shows society that women can men can be the same, though they do not look it.
 |
| Salvador Dali, The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, 14 December 1933 |
Surrealism is the "dissent from and critique of the stabilized bourgeois order (and values) in the 1920s and 1930s" (PowerPoint Lecture 8). In Salvador Dali's art piece, he composes his art of images based primarily on a sexual nature. By doing this, he went against what bourgeois values were. This almost pornographic looking artwork shows people in a sexual nature, including the ears. In turn, this image created a basically behind the scenes of life. Though their are images of ears and sculptures, they still produce a seductive look at the image. A value of bourgeois was that private life was indeed private, however to depict essentially some one's private life disbanded the values that were once upheld.
Honestly, the image to many could be repulsive and offending because it essentially shows the sexual life of man. Though, during this time one's sexual side was very private, and it is understandable how many could be offended and maybe embarrassed by seeing Dali's art work. Though in today's society, people are more comfortable when seeing sexual images, since it is displayed in all medias, so seeing this image was okay for me. However, times have changes and in the 20s and 30s people were more conservative about their sexuality and what they did and looked like in the bedroom.
I like the "Cut with the Kitchen Knife" piece quite a bit. I think it's interesting to consider how avant-garde artists were shying away from politics ever since Impressionism and the Commune. With the horror of WWI, though, Dada artists like Hannah Höch brought back the political subject matter by referencing and visually echoing the chaos of war. Once again, Dada changed the definition of "avant-garde" to again include politics.
ReplyDelete-Prof. Bowen
Regarding your statement, "This art mocked and ridiculed other art as well as society and government, no topic was off limits," I am not 100% sure that I agree with the idea that mocked or ridiculed. I think that it was new, and random and subjective, and that aspect has led many to categorize it as some sort of revenge or backlash against politics and government. From what I have come to understand about Dada and how it began, I think that it was none of that; it was actually a group of people who were not seeing any positive change in their society what so ever, they saw the downhill spiral that was occurring and noticed that the visuals being created by artists at that time did nothing but cover up the reality of the turmoil, what was intended to be positive was actually having a very negative effect. This group decided to create visuals that were so outlandish and "confusing," in what I assume were attempts NOT to send messages necessarily, but rather to make people stop, and think, and just realize that up until that point they were looking at art and being told what to think, and being told how to react; upon seeing this kind of work, they had no idea what to think, they were finally aware that it was up to them, as individuals, to think for themselves, and eventually this new sort of thinking would affect in a mass way, it would promote a train of in all other areas of society, such as the reasons WHY the county was at war, what changes needed to be made to bring the country back to life, etc. The Dadaists were somewhat clever in realizing that art could be used as a tool to subconsciously make people aware of their LACK of awareness. That's what I think. :)
ReplyDeleteGood post! Dada is one of those art styles that, I believe, had a lot of influence from Cubism. You can tell by the photo-montage aesthetic that Hannah Hoch's painting has. It also seem to follow more of the analytical Cubism than synthetic Cubism. I really glad that Cubism existed because I love Dada. I think without Cubism, Dada would have been WAY different.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the art that you decided to talk about for your blog, its different than most of the other post's i've seen. Im not quite sure however if I agree with the statement that Dadaism was just intended for the rebellion against the war. I think they were also trying to make people think about art in a different way. But when people started to miss the point, and tried to create art that copied their style, they sank back into the unknown, and stopped creating art.
ReplyDelete