Dada was a reactionary movement that sprung up in the early
1900’s due to the stress of World War 1. As World War I raged on, many artists
fled to safer lands, most notably of those lands was Zurich as it held as a neutral
position. The war itself brought more
than a staggering amount of deaths on both sides, it brought with it
frustration of the civilians and in this case, the artists. These artists were
angry and frustrated at society for having such a war and they had to express
this frustration in some way. So while other people were protesting out in the
streets, some artists found their own way to protest, and that was to protest against
the art of the time. These protesters
fought back against the traditional views of art and created their own form of
(non) art. Thus the Dada movement was created. ‘Dada’ which is basically a
nonsense word accurately describes the content of the art they would produce.
Since they were protesting the traditional views of art like rationalism, they
created their own form of art that flew in the face of these principles, and
thus they ended up with their ‘non-art’ Dada.
As ironic as it is to treat a movement with the sole purpose
of protesting traditional art movement as just another movement, the vast
popularity it received and how much it influenced later avant-garde movements
cannot be ignored. While Dada had no
real ‘style’ since the concept was all about being nonsensical there were
trends that appeared to be popular within the Dada movement. Techniques such as
collage, photo montage, use of typography were all very popular among the
prominent Dada artists.
Among the prominent Dada artists was a lady named Hannah
Hoch. Professionally trained as and artists and patternmaker, Hannah Hoch
explored the Dada style with a focus on collage. Her work excels in portraying the
Dada movement because of how nonsensical, and sometimes surreal, her designs
were.
In this work here we can see just to what extent the Dada
movement and Hannah Hoch went to break down the traditional views and practices
of art. Hoch uses collage here is what seems to be a very random and
haphazardly way, and while one might say that was the whole point of the Dada
movement, I would like to point out that while it does seem very haphazardly,
it also has some form of composition. The composition is balanced as a whole as
there the viewer is not just dragged to one part of the image but the image as
a whole. The individual images aesthetically make sense in the context of each
other, meaning that the images were not placed without any thought for
aesthetics but they were placed as they are for a specific aesthetic reason.
I feel that the fact that Hannah Hoch being such a prominent
figure (at the time) as a woman should not be glossed over. In such a male dominated society,
surely female artists had enough trouble getting their work to be acknowledged,
but Hannah Hoch’s work was not only acknowledged but she is now considered one
of the key figures of
the Dada Movement for here masterful use of collage, I feel
like that is a feat in itself, apart from the actual work she has produced.
References:
·
Shelly Esaak-arthistory.about.com-2014-[http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm][Last
accesed on 04-11-2014]
·
Whitechapelgallery-whitechapelgallery.org-2014- [http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/hannah-hch][Last
accessed on 04-11-2014]
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