Photo story
“I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we tend to delineate around all we can achieve,” Hannah Höch once said, challenging the rigid limits that society often imposes on creativity, identity, and social roles. This sentiment resonates deeply throughout the Assembled Worlds exhibition at Vienna’s Lower Belvedere, curated by Martin Waldmeier from the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. This major showcase of Höch’s work in Austria feels long overdue, bringing together around 80 of her photomontages, alongside paintings, drawings, prints, and archival materials. Together, they offer a vivid glimpse into her groundbreaking contributions to 20th-century art.
Höch was a key figure in the Berlin Dada movement, which famously took a radical approach to art and politics in the turbulent years after World War I. As you explore her work, you quickly realize that being almost the only woman closely associated with the Dada group in Germany didn’t stop her from shaping its aesthetic with a powerful, innovative voice. Her photomontages—created with Raoul Hausmann, are dynamic and provocative. Höch herself saw these works as “static film,” a concept that brilliantly captures their ability to slice through reality and reassemble it with sharp, new perspectives. It’s fascinating to see how her approach resonates with the montage techniques pioneered by avant-garde filmmakers like Hans Richter and Dziga Vertov. Both Höch and these filmmakers pull you out of the familiar, presenting a fractured reality where images are reassembled in ways that provoke new, often unsettling, perspectives.
One standout piece, Heads of State (1920), greets you with an absurd juxtaposition—German leaders Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske in their bathing trunks, set against a background featuring an ornate textile pattern resembling domestic interior patterns. This piece perfectly captures Dada’s critique of authority, using humor and visual contrast to deliver biting social commentary.
In Ohne Titel from the Ethnographic Museum series (1924-1930), she juxtaposes a non-Western sculpture figure and a glamorous woman from the European popular press, distorted with exaggerated large eyes—suggesting that society looks at women much as they look at a sculpture from a different culture, exotic and eroticized.
Like much of her earlier work, Höch’s Ethnographic series speaks to her experiences as a woman in a male-dominated art world with a relentless critique of the status of women in her contemporary society—challenging and redefining societal expectations in Weimar Germany. Her critique was rooted in her own life, where she often found herself sidelined by her male peers within the Dada group, dismissed as a “good girl” or a “muse.” It’s telling that her work was nearly excluded from the First International Dada Fair in 1920 until Raoul Hausmann insisted on her inclusion.
The story of Höch’s life takes a darker turn during the Nazi regime when her work was condemned as “degenerate art.” Forced into hiding, she continued to create in isolation, her perseverance eventually earning her renewed recognition in the 1960s and 1970s, with major exhibitions in Paris and Berlin.
Höch’s lesser-known later works keep her signature collage and photomontage techniques, but the sharp political edge that once defined her Dada-era pieces gives way to something more subdued—a shift toward abstract, surreal landscapes. These works don’t strike with the same force as her earlier critiques, but they remain compelling, showing a seasoned artist who has turned her gaze inward. The biting social commentary fades, replaced by a more nuanced interplay of organic forms, where plants, flowers, and human figures meld in unexpected ways, subtly questioning the boundaries between the natural world and the constructed.
Including archival materials in Assembled Worlds—such as sketches, letters, and photographs—provides a rare, intimate glimpse into Höch’s creative process. These artifacts offer a fuller picture of her as both a pioneer in modern art and a woman who pushed through significant obstacles with tenacity and vision.
Höch’s innovative photomontages laid the groundwork for movements like Surrealism, Pop Art, and Postmodernism. Artists like Claude Cahun, Grete Stern, and Cindy Sherman owe a debt to her fearless exploration of gender, identity, and societal norms. As you move through the Assembled Worlds exhibition, it’s clear that Höch’s formidable vision continues to challenge how we see the world—a timely reminder that art can and should compel us to rethink and reassemble our perceptions.
Hannah Höch: Assembled Worlds Lower Belvedere, Orangery Rennweg 6, 1030 Wien; 21 June – 6 October 2024 An exhibition by Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern in collaboration with the Belvedere.
Curated by Martin Waldmeier (Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern).
Assistant Curators: Johanna Hofer and Ana Petrovic