Hannah Hoch exhibition

As part of my distortion project I went to see the Hannah Hoch exhibition at the whitechapel gallery. It was something that was advertised at an underground statio so I looked into it and thought if be nice to go and see this artist. She simply but effectively distorts existing images to create new pieces of art. Her manipulation of people especially females fits in with my response to the idea of distorted beauty.

Hannah Hoch was part of Berlins Dada movement in the 1920's. "She was a driving force in the development of 20th century collage" - Whitechapel museum. The Dada movement was the negative reaction to World War 1 in forms of art, literature, poetry and theatre. She would take images from fashion magazines and illustrated journals to create humorous collages using the technique of photomontage. This is where you create a new piece of artwork by joining pieces of photographs. This is different from collages because instead of piecing images to create a moodboard you are using pieces of images to make one new piece. As well as incorporating embroidery to work she would use techniques such as linocut printing to create abstract patterns.This was her way of expressing herself in a time of social and political change. It can be said that her art what very rebellious. It's clear looking at some of her work that she didn't take life too serious and seemed like a fun person. A quote from one of the information boards said "The purpose of art was not to decorate or to replicate reality but to act on behalf of the spirit and the canning values of a generation", I think this was something she said but either way I love the idea if being just free when it comes to art and not trying to copy exactly what you see. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures from the exhibitions but there are a few that I found online at the bottom. One of her images titled 'Liebe I'm Busch'(love in the bush) was of a white and black person mixed together, this would have created an ambiguous scene. Although I found some images meaningful there was some that looked like they had been created just for the humour, this is somewhat inspiring as she wasn't creating something that already was there but something new out of existing pieces. It was in 1945 that her art took a different route rather than just collaging she started to experiment with cutting out, rotating and inverting elements of images. Although moving from collaging she created beautiful patterns and artwork. Overall I did enjoy this exhibition, I liked the feel of her throughout her pieces. She was someone who wanted to make people laugh as well as to make them admire her pieces. Hannah Hoch manages to select pieces of photographs to create one new piece of artwork, leaving the person looking at it to interpret the new image and the ideas behind it. It's a simple technique but one that can create lovely new images. 

Staatshaupter 'head if state' - 1918/20

   New York - 1920/21

   Flucht 'flight' - 1931

   Kleine Sonne 'little sun' -1969