Hannah Höch - "The Quiet Girl with the Big Voice"

The Dada cultural movement was a very interesting one in that the ones who provoked and produced the movement were exemplifying a battle against the unstable political and social situation brought on by destruction through WWI. Despite the paradoxical fighting war with war (further developed later), I found it very interesting that through the war and its effects, the blossoming of German artistic thought evolved. I really enjoyed Hannah Höch's avant-garde and abstract take on her artwork, and the idea that really evoked me to think was that Dada dichotomy was to present the world according to "them" versus "us." After reading this, I really had to think about what that meant and what exactly it meant to me. I eventually ended up seeing the Dada pieces as depicting an array of pictorial fragments that may certainly appear only as convolution and confusion to many people, but to the Dadaists, the pieces were displaying many different thoughts and perspectives mashed into one piece of art, depicting a certain thing and how so many facets of society have an effect on that specific thing. Underlying each of the pieces of art, I saw a social message that urged people to go against the status quo. The pieces presented a “war-like” battle between whoever “them” and “us” are and I believe that was simply a key idea in the creating of the pieces to provoke thought. I think that this idea arose from the actual war and I find it very paradoxical and yet intriguing that this concept was used.

Another thing that I noticed about Höch’s pieces and Dada pieces in general was that they did not display that many bold, blatant words, if any text at all. This has been different than most of the work we have been looking at in class thus far. I think it is very interesting how much one can dissect a piece of artwork with text differently than one without it.

The piece I chose, done by Hausmann, depicts an array of different things that I feel represent technologically and economically evolving society, whether it medicine, typewriters, or business. The meaning of the piece is to present the world according to “them” versus “us” in that some people believe that all of these societal advances are good, but some see it as the degradation of society.