What Is Dada How Does Hannah Hoch’S Cut With The Kitchen Knife Reflect Dada’S Ideas?

8 The political content in Höch’s Cut with the Dada kitchen knife is conveyed through the means of carving out images of bodies from the carcass of popular culture using a metaphorical kitchen implement.

So this is the corner that has Hannah Hoch, and the map, and then it also has other Dadaist figures. There’s the Dadaist, Raoul Hausmann. Hannah Hoch had a relationship with Hausmann for awhile. And for a long time, all of the literature on Hoch referred to as the wife of Raoul Hausmann.

A conversation with Dr. Juliana Kreinik, Dr. Steven Zucker, and Dr. Beth Harris Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919–1920, collage, mixed media, (Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

Hannah Höch, detail of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, collage, mixed media, 1919–1920 (Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) Dada—its calls for revolution, its celebration of technology, popular culture, and the New Women—dominates the composition.

Who is on the Dada axis in Cut with the Kitchen Knife?

In Cut with the Kitchen Knife such well-known female figures as Käthe Kollwitz, dancer Niddy Impekoven, and actress Asta Nielsen, are aligned with the Dada axis—from the word “dada” on the upper left to “die große welt dada” (the great Dada world) spelled out at lower right.

A raucous provocation to civil society and entrenched traditions in art, the transnational movement (with outposts in Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, and Paris) quickly spread. Each Dada group developed its own set of practices.

The cut-and-paste technique was, in fact, a popular 19th-century process long used by amateurs to produce photography albums. Höch and her lover (and fellow Dadaist) Raoul Hausmann both claimed to have discovered photomontage in 1918 while vacationing on the Baltic Sea.

Höch had moved to Berlin in 1912, working part-time for Ullstein Verlag—the publisher of Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (Berlin Illustrated Newspaper) and Die Dame (The Lady—Germany’s equivalent to Vogue ). The only woman in the Berlin Dada group, she lived a non-traditional lifestyle that bears similarities to the so-called “New Woman.”

First International Dada Fair 1920 . Cut with the Kitchen Knife was initially shown publicly at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920 . Although hard to believe now, Höch had to fight for the opportunity to show her work in the Dada Fair.

The photomontage includes the “anti-dada” contingent at upper right (full of Weimar political figures), and the world of the Dadaists at the lower right. Dada images and text cut diagonally across the picture to the upper left where Albert Einstein proclaims that “dada is not an art trend.”.

While mocking Weimar politicians, Cut with the Kitchen Knife also celebrates women’s victories. A map at lower right indicates the countries where women had the right to vote—a right only recently ratified in Germany with the signing of the new constitution in 1918.

Who is on the Dada axis in Cut with the Kitchen Knife?

In Cut with the Kitchen Knife such well-known female figures as Käthe Kollwitz, dancer Niddy Impekoven, and actress Asta Nielsen, are aligned with the Dada axis—from the word “dada” on the upper left to “die große welt dada” (the great Dada world) spelled out at lower right.

Dada images and text cut diagonally across the picture to the upper left where Albert Einstein proclaims that “dada is not an art trend.”. At lower left, images of the masses seem to imply a coming revolution headed by assassinated Communist leader Karl Liebnecht who advises us to “join dada.”.

A raucous provocation to civil society and entrenched traditions in art, the transnational movement (with outposts in Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, and Paris) quickly spread. Each Dada group developed its own set of practices.

The cut-and-paste technique was, in fact, a popular 19th-century process long used by amateurs to produce photography albums. Höch and her lover (and fellow Dadaist) Raoul Hausmann both claimed to have discovered photomontage in 1918 while vacationing on the Baltic Sea.

Höch’s photomontage and its cast of characters is divided, approximately, into four quadrants. The photomontage includes the “anti-dada” contingent at upper right (full of Weimar political figures), and the world of the Dadaists at the lower right.

First International Dada Fair 1920 . George Grosz and John Heartfield holding a sign that states “ Art is Dead Long Live the Machine Art of Tatlin,” photo at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, 1920 . Cut with the Kitchen Knife was initially shown publicly at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920 .

Cut with the Kitchen Knife is a photomontage, made by cutting photographs from mass media publications and pasting them onto a support to create new juxtapositions and new meanings. This is a layered and complex artwork that speaks to the tumultuous moment it was created. As Höch later put it:

Who made the cut with the kitchen knife dada?

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, collage, mixed media, 1919-1920. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. This is the currently selected item.

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany.