Why Did Hannah Hoch Make Cut With A Kitchen Knife?
CUT WITH THE KITCHEN KNIFE includes more than 150 illustrations of works Hoch created during 1918-1933, the Weimar years. Hoch assembled her montages by selecting photographs of women from illustrated print sources and juxtaposing them with fragments of scenes from Weimar and German colonial society.
Hannah Höch, world-renowned for her works during the Weimar era, was a pioneer in many creative and cultural fields. She was a pivotal female artist in the Berlin Dada movement, which destroyed sound, language, and pictures and reassembled them into new elements, writings, and interpretations.
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 Hoch in Gotha – eine Ausstellung zeigt die weniger bekannten Bilder und Zeichnungen der sonst als Dada-Dame gerĂĽhmten KĂĽnstlerin: Die Frau fĂĽr Besserwisser”. Die Zeit (in German). 13 August 1993. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
What does the cut with the kitchen knife mean?
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.
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.
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.
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.”.
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. The group’s new experiments with photomontage dominated at the fair.
In Weimar Germany, the “New Woman” was the subject of both praise and derision in Berlin’s illustrated press. Her image, which appeared frequently in newspapers and magazines, became fodder for Höch’s photomontages and their celebration of new and expanding roles for women.
If we look closely, Höch’s tiny head appears at the upper left corner of a map showing countries with women’s suffrage. At the center of the composition is the headless pirouetting figure of Niddy Impekoven, above which floats the head of famed artist and activist Kollwitz.
When was Cut with the Kitchen Knife first shown?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.”.
In the center of the composition, the head of artist and activist Käthe Kollwitz, taken from a recent newspaper story, attests to her appointment as the first female professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Chris Lebeau, Portrait of Hannah Höch, 1933 (Drents Museum, Assen)