“Hannah Hoch: Collages,” an exhibition of photo-collage works by Dada artist Hannah Hoch, will be on view at the Museum of Art Saturday through Nov. 28.
Circulated by the Goethe Institute, the free, public exhibition traces Hoch’s achievements in this medium from 1920 through 1967. An exhibition catalogue is available for purchase in the Museum of Art Gift Shop.
Hoch (1889–1978) was a central figure in the avant-garde of post-World War I Berlin. The only woman in a group that included John Heartfield, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters, Hoch developed her own style based on collage. She is important to 20th-century German art because of her contribution to the Dada movement and for helping create the collage as an art form.
As a member of the Berlin Dada movement, Hoch joined a diverse group of artists, architects, writers and theater people who, revolted by the horror and destruction of the World War I, formed a loose circle to produce multi-media works of visual and theatrical art that embraced and celebrated the irrationality, social hypocrisy and chaos of the world around them. In her own work, Hoch gathers discarded fragments of everyday life—clippings from newspapers, advertisements, magazines and the like—and splices them together into amusing, disturbing and politically pointed collages. Like others in her circle, Hoch rejected traditional ideas of “fine art” and sought to create new forms of expression more in keeping with the mood of the fast-moving and highly mechanized modern world.
In conjunction with “Hannah Hoch: Collages”, the Museum will present the following programs:
“Club Dada,” 7:30 p.m. Oct. 16. For this year’s annual Friend’s Membership Party, the Museum of Art Apse turns into a “Dada Cabaret,” with a potpourri of monologues, skits, dances and songs performed by Prof. Martin Walsh of the Residential College and members of the Residential College and U-M Theatre Departments. Club Dada recreates the exuberant, often unpredictable ambiance of a Weimar cabaret. The party continues after the performance with a 1920s-inspired reception. $10 admission. Open to Friends of the Museum of Art only; memberships begin at $35. For ticket information, call 747-2064.
“Hannah Hoch: The New Woman and Androgyny,” 2 p.m. Oct. 17, Angell Hall, Auditorium B. To mark the opening of this exhibition, Maud Lavin, author of Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch, will lecture about the artist and her work. A public reception will follow in the Museum. Free.
“Pleasure Architecture as a Mirror of Modern German History,” 4 p.m. Nov. 19, Museum of Art Audio Visual Room. A slide lecture by Ann Arbor News writer Roger Green on Haus Vaterland, a multi-storied amusement complex that was a Weimar Berlin landmark and one of Disneyland’s precursors. Green demonstrates how the design and decoration of a popular amusement facility embody some of the ideas and events also documented in the exhibition. Free.
ArtVideos 12:10 p.m. Wednesdays, Museum of Art Audio Visual Room. Free. For information, call 764-0395.
Hannah Hoch (Oct. 13): This film portrait of Hannah Hoch shows how the artist drew heavily on her own experience for inspiration. Cut with the Kitchen Knife by Hannah Hoch (Oct. 13): Based on one of the Hoch’s collage scripts, this film includes caricatures of such figures as Albert Einstein and Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. With English subtitles.
Germany—Dada (Oct. 20): This film history of the German Dada movement shows how artists reacted to the horrors of World War I through such diverse media as cartoons, architecture, typography, theatre, advertising and costume design.
Sunday Tours (2 p.m. Oct. 24 and Oct. 31). Free hour-long tours of Hannah Hoch: Collages.
Museum hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. TuesdaySaturday and noon– 5 p.m Sunday.
