As Germany began its slide into hyperinflation following the First World War, it did not escape t... more As Germany began its slide into hyperinflation following the First World War, it did not escape the notice of some that while generals and politicians banqueted, citizens, including the war-injured, were starving. Hannah Höch was one such artist whose response to the political and cultural context included a photomontage ostensibly cut using the Dada kitchen knife. Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands ('Cut with the Dada kitchen knife through the last Weimar beer-belly cultural epoch of Germany'), 1919-20, is a large photomontage made from print reproductions cut from magazines and journals, first shown at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, in 1920. 1 Höch was a German artist who, as an art student in Berlin in 1915, had become involved with the Berlin Dada group. 2 She is known for her use of photomontage, a technique characteristic of Berlin Dada during the early Weimar period, in which previously publishe...
This thesis presents an analysis of Hoch’s work in relation to the idea of radical imagination. I... more This thesis presents an analysis of Hoch’s work in relation to the idea of radical imagination. It proposes that Hoch activated radical imagination in her work, aiming to transform perceptions of reality, in order to create social change. In pursuit of such change, Hoch was influenced both by psychoanalysis and philosophy, in particular, by Salomo Friedlander’s concept of creative indifference. The target for radical imagination is the dismantlement and reconstruction of the prevailing moral, social and aesthetic order, from its root. This study argues that its effect derives from its rootedness in the perception of subjective realities. Beginning in the unconscious processes of looking and the construction of concepts of self and other, it is radical in means as well as in intention towards fundamental changes in values. While not directed at specific political aims, it is argued here that there is, nonetheless, an ethical and political imperative. The research has been carried out...
The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a producti... more The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a productive life as a pioneering twentieth-century modernist, but her work is unified to an extent by her deliberate intention to affect the viewer and to change how we understand reality, and to that end, empathy plays an important part. This paper considers how empathy might function in Höch’s work in relation to imagination, and also discusses an animated model of imagination, made to investigate possible architectures surrounding imagination and other associated psychic states, including empathy. The focus here is on the involvement of the body in empathy, the role played in empathy by imagination, and issues relating to body-image in Höch’s work. The body is represented in much of Höch’s work but it is often altered through distortions, additions or substitutions, especially in her photomontage where she cuts up and reassembles photographic reproductions of bodies. The resulting figures reta...
The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a producti... more The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a productive life as a pioneering twentieth-century modernist, but her work is unified to an extent by her deliberate intention to affect the viewer and to change how we understand reality, and to that end, empathy plays an important part. This paper considers how empathy might function in Höch's work in relation to imagination, and also discusses an animated model of imagination, made to investigate possible architectures surrounding imagination and other associated psychic states, including empathy. The focus here is on the involvement of the body in empathy, the role played in empathy by imagination, and issues relating to body-image in Höch's work. The body is represented in much of Höch's work but it is often altered through distortions, additions or substitutions, especially in her photomontage where she cuts up and reassembles photographic reproductions of bodies. The resulting figures retain a bodily completeness but are often grotesque and sometimes disturbing. Empathy, as an ability to understand the feelings of others, or to establish an emotional rapport, involving both mind and body, as well as representations of the body; this paper aims to show that an embodied imagination is also involved. Empathy can be understood as built into to the exercise of art in a general sense: the artist, as a communicator of information and feelings, inevitably has to imagine and understand the viewer's feelings. Both artist and viewer will often put themselves in the other's shoes in an empathetic manner. For example, in Höch's Boa Perlina (1945) a snake is drawn by collaging a photograph of a string of pearls, some feathery pieces of fabric and other elements; 1 we can see this is not a snake, but understand also that it evokes the idea of a snake in Höch's imagination. And it is equally clear to the viewer that Höch expects us to understand that this image evokes the idea of a snake to her, and that she supposes that it might do the same for us. In communicating this she imbues a represented object with life, animating a collection of representations and giving them form in our imagination. Another approach to the involvement of empathy in art is through the idea that the mind or soul and the body are at least strongly connected, if not a single entity. The brain is a bodily organ that might be considered as a potential location for the mind or soul, if it were to be found in one place and, historically, the heart has similarly been considered. Darwin discussed feelings as both emotions (psychological) and sensations (physiological) in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) where sensations are described as being generated in the body. 2 He quotes Norfolk from Henry VIII addressing Cardinal Wolsey:
In her pioneering photomontage Hannah Höch demonstrates her ambition to transform the viewer's pe... more In her pioneering photomontage Hannah Höch demonstrates her ambition to transform the viewer's perception through imagination, both hers and theirs. In the process of making photomontage complex relationships between the artist, viewer, and original source material arise in which the displacements involved create distance. Her use of the idea of the cross-section by contrast allows otherwise disparate elements to be brought into close proximity. This paper explores Höch's use of the spatial metaphors of the bridge and the abyss in relation to Salomo Friedländer's concept of Creative Indifference, the Die Brücke group and the influence of Nietzsche's use of the bridge metaphor and his use of the idea of polarity. Höch's metaphorical use of the image of the abyss could imply spatial relationships but these begin to break down and are replaced instead by irreducible and unbridgeable differences in conceptions of reality that imagination allows to coexist simultaneously.
As Germany began its slide into hyperinflation following the First World War, it did not escape t... more As Germany began its slide into hyperinflation following the First World War, it did not escape the notice of some that while generals and politicians banqueted, citizens, including the war-injured, were starving. Hannah Höch was one such artist whose response to the political and cultural context included a photomontage ostensibly cut using the Dada kitchen knife. Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands ('Cut with the Dada kitchen knife through the last Weimar beer-belly cultural epoch of Germany'), 1919-20, is a large photomontage made from print reproductions cut from magazines and journals, first shown at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, in 1920. 1 Höch was a German artist who, as an art student in Berlin in 1915, had become involved with the Berlin Dada group. 2 She is known for her use of photomontage, a technique characteristic of Berlin Dada during the early Weimar period, in which previously publishe...
This thesis presents an analysis of Hoch’s work in relation to the idea of radical imagination. I... more This thesis presents an analysis of Hoch’s work in relation to the idea of radical imagination. It proposes that Hoch activated radical imagination in her work, aiming to transform perceptions of reality, in order to create social change. In pursuit of such change, Hoch was influenced both by psychoanalysis and philosophy, in particular, by Salomo Friedlander’s concept of creative indifference. The target for radical imagination is the dismantlement and reconstruction of the prevailing moral, social and aesthetic order, from its root. This study argues that its effect derives from its rootedness in the perception of subjective realities. Beginning in the unconscious processes of looking and the construction of concepts of self and other, it is radical in means as well as in intention towards fundamental changes in values. While not directed at specific political aims, it is argued here that there is, nonetheless, an ethical and political imperative. The research has been carried out...
The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a producti... more The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a productive life as a pioneering twentieth-century modernist, but her work is unified to an extent by her deliberate intention to affect the viewer and to change how we understand reality, and to that end, empathy plays an important part. This paper considers how empathy might function in Höch’s work in relation to imagination, and also discusses an animated model of imagination, made to investigate possible architectures surrounding imagination and other associated psychic states, including empathy. The focus here is on the involvement of the body in empathy, the role played in empathy by imagination, and issues relating to body-image in Höch’s work. The body is represented in much of Höch’s work but it is often altered through distortions, additions or substitutions, especially in her photomontage where she cuts up and reassembles photographic reproductions of bodies. The resulting figures reta...
The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a producti... more The German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) worked in a range of media and styles during a productive life as a pioneering twentieth-century modernist, but her work is unified to an extent by her deliberate intention to affect the viewer and to change how we understand reality, and to that end, empathy plays an important part. This paper considers how empathy might function in Höch's work in relation to imagination, and also discusses an animated model of imagination, made to investigate possible architectures surrounding imagination and other associated psychic states, including empathy. The focus here is on the involvement of the body in empathy, the role played in empathy by imagination, and issues relating to body-image in Höch's work. The body is represented in much of Höch's work but it is often altered through distortions, additions or substitutions, especially in her photomontage where she cuts up and reassembles photographic reproductions of bodies. The resulting figures retain a bodily completeness but are often grotesque and sometimes disturbing. Empathy, as an ability to understand the feelings of others, or to establish an emotional rapport, involving both mind and body, as well as representations of the body; this paper aims to show that an embodied imagination is also involved. Empathy can be understood as built into to the exercise of art in a general sense: the artist, as a communicator of information and feelings, inevitably has to imagine and understand the viewer's feelings. Both artist and viewer will often put themselves in the other's shoes in an empathetic manner. For example, in Höch's Boa Perlina (1945) a snake is drawn by collaging a photograph of a string of pearls, some feathery pieces of fabric and other elements; 1 we can see this is not a snake, but understand also that it evokes the idea of a snake in Höch's imagination. And it is equally clear to the viewer that Höch expects us to understand that this image evokes the idea of a snake to her, and that she supposes that it might do the same for us. In communicating this she imbues a represented object with life, animating a collection of representations and giving them form in our imagination. Another approach to the involvement of empathy in art is through the idea that the mind or soul and the body are at least strongly connected, if not a single entity. The brain is a bodily organ that might be considered as a potential location for the mind or soul, if it were to be found in one place and, historically, the heart has similarly been considered. Darwin discussed feelings as both emotions (psychological) and sensations (physiological) in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) where sensations are described as being generated in the body. 2 He quotes Norfolk from Henry VIII addressing Cardinal Wolsey:
In her pioneering photomontage Hannah Höch demonstrates her ambition to transform the viewer's pe... more In her pioneering photomontage Hannah Höch demonstrates her ambition to transform the viewer's perception through imagination, both hers and theirs. In the process of making photomontage complex relationships between the artist, viewer, and original source material arise in which the displacements involved create distance. Her use of the idea of the cross-section by contrast allows otherwise disparate elements to be brought into close proximity. This paper explores Höch's use of the spatial metaphors of the bridge and the abyss in relation to Salomo Friedländer's concept of Creative Indifference, the Die Brücke group and the influence of Nietzsche's use of the bridge metaphor and his use of the idea of polarity. Höch's metaphorical use of the image of the abyss could imply spatial relationships but these begin to break down and are replaced instead by irreducible and unbridgeable differences in conceptions of reality that imagination allows to coexist simultaneously.
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