Tuesday 21 April 2015

Hannah Hoch

 
Hannah Hoch (1889-1978) was a German Dada artist, she was best know for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of Photomontage/collage. Her work is very recognizable and unique, and is often politically or socially themed.

 
 
The collage above entitled 'Bouquet of eyes' is probably my favourite piece of Hoch's work, In the collage you can see a number of eyes, arranged in such a manner to look like a bouquet of flowers, this is the main subject of the collage. The orange background colour portrays a relaxing mood, however this sense of ease is destroyed by the fact that all the eyes seem to be starring straight at the viewer all the time, as the eyes in the bouquet are focusing in all different directions, meaning you can not escape their gaze. Also some of the eyes in the bouquet are just the pupil and some are the full eye including the eye lid. this collage is said to engage with the ideas and themes of feminism and sexism in her work, as the eyes with the eye id included are very recognisable as male or female, however with the eyes that are just the pupil it is impossible to tell what gender the eye is.
I wanted to look at Hoch's work as inspiration for this project, as I really enjoy her collage style and her work deals with similar themes to the ones in my own work.
I also wanted to look at her work as I really wanted to try this style of collage, as I have never done this type of collage before and wanted to experiment with found images out of fashion magazines.     

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