Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch

The women of Weimar Germany had an uneasy alliance with modernity: while they experienced cultural liberation after World War I, these "New Women" still faced restrictions in their earning power, political participation, and reproductive freedom. Images of women in newspapers, films, magazines, and fine art of the 1920s, reflected their ambiguous social role, for the women who were pictured working in factories, wearing androgynous fashions, or enjoying urban nightlife seemed to be at once empowered and ornamental, both consumers and products of the new culture. In this book Maud Lavin investigates the multilayered social construction of femininity in the mass culture of Weimar Germany, focusing on the photomontages of the avant-garde artist Hannah Hoch. Hoch, a member of the Berlin Dada group, was recognized as one of the most innovative practitioners of photomontage. In such works as "Data-Ernst" and "Cut with the Kitchen Knife", she reconstructed the seductive mass media images of the New Woman with their appeal intact but with their contours fractured in order to expose the contradictions of the new female stereotypes. Her photomontages exhibit a disturbing tension between pleasure and anger, confidence and anxiety. In Weimar - as today - says Lavin, the representation of women in the mass media took on a political meaning when it challenged the distribution of power in society. Hoch's work provides evidence of the necessity for women to shape the production and reception of the images that redefine their role.