Art of the Dada and Degenerate movement is an art filled with anarchy. Driven by the political and social upheaval that followed Europe after World War I the boundaries of art are pushed into a non-sensical critique of the time. World War I outraged the population of Europe and Dada artists found a way to express their discontent. Expression in this Dada manner evolves into what the Nazi’s name Degenerate art. The politically charged artwork of Hannah Höch, particularly Cut with the Kitchen Knife, continues into the work of other artists such as Picasso.
Although working in different countries and decades Hannah Höch’s Cut with a Kitchen Knife and Picasso’s Guernica have the same political implications and critique’s. Höch was part of the Berlin Dada movement and worked mostly in collage. As the only woman within the Berlin Dadist’s one of her main focuses was on gender roles and equality. The Weimer Republic that Höch is criticizing had many downfalls, but Author of Cut with the Kitchen Knife Maud Lavin points out the main hardship. “One of their principal complaints centered on the hypocrisy of the supposedly socialist government. Far from establishing socialism, the new Weimar government immediately entered into agreements with big business and with the vestiges of the imperial military” (Lavin, 16). As the 1920’s progressed into the 1930’s Dadaists lost their momentum as well as the Weimar Republic. The 1930’s come with a dictatorship that defines European history. Picasso living in Paris, but from Spain, is much aware of the Nazi occupation and in direct response to the bombing in a Spanish city named Guernica he creates his painting (Arnheim, 18-20).
Aesthetically non-sensical, fragmented words, and people of the Weimer Republic on out of scale bodies are just the beginning of Hannah Höch’s collage. There are many layers within the idea or concept of the piece. Höch includes machinery within the collage in a critique of the warfare and the industrialization of society. People were injured and killed in ways never seen before due to technological advances in World War I. This was seen as unacceptable and absurd to those of the Dada movement. These artists were driven to shock political power into the reality of their choices. In the upper right corner of Hock’s collage political figures such as, Whilhelm II, General Field Marshal Friendrich von Hindenburg and General von Pflazer-Baltin are all atop machinery and in ridiculous positions with parts of themselves replaced as dancers or actresses. This corner gradually and diagonally splits off the composition into people of the Dada movement and celebrates Dada.
Picasso is known primarily as a Cubist artist, but he creates more organic forms as he begins his visual political assessment in direct response to the bombing of the city Guernica in 1937 (Arnheim, 21). Just as Hannah Höch used gender distinction in her collages, Picasso makes the central figures of Guernica women to represent the helplessness of the bomb stricken city of Guernica. Twisting the reality of suffering, confusion, and anger into fragmented and expressive representation Guernica creates a modern public view of human devastation. This would be considered Degenerate Art by the Nazi party because of its modern take on a current subject and its irrational representation (Foster, 309).
Politics became increasingly important to the content of art in the decades after World War I and in anticipation of World War II. Artists Hannah Höch and Picasso develop a style that resists the current political values and decisions. Their art redefines the boundaries of painting, collage, and photomontage. Guernica and Cut with the Kitchen Knife are visual expressions of a world filled with war and an outraged society.
Sources:
Arnheim, Rudolf . Picasso’s Guernica: The Genesis of a Painting. 1st. Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1962. 18-23. Print.
Foster, Hal. Art Since 1900. 2nd. 1. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2011. 305-309. Print.
Lavin, Maud. Cut with the Kitchen Knife the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch. 1st. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993. 13-37. Print.
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