structed work, broken panes and all, between two heavier panes of
glass, Duchamp declared the work completed “by chance.”
Duchamp (and the generations of later artists who were pro-
foundly influenced by his art and especially his attitude) considered
life and art matters of chance and choice freed from the conventions
of society and tradition. Within his approach to art and life, each act
was individual and unique. Every person’s choice of found objects
would be different, for example, and each person’s throw of the dice
would be at a different instant and probably would yield a different
number. This philosophy of utter freedom for artists was fundamen-
tal to the history of art in the 20th century. Duchamp spent much of
World War I in New York, inspiring a group of American artists and
collectors with his radical rethinking of the role of artists and of the
nature of art.HANNAH HÖCHDada spread throughout much of western
Europe, arriving as early as 1917 in Berlin, where it soon took on an
activist political edge, partially in response to the economic, social,
and political chaos in that city in the years at the end of and immedi-
ately after World War I. The Berlin Dadaists developed to a new inten-sity a technique that had been used in
private and popular arts long before
the 20th century to create a composition
by pasting together pieces of paper. A
few years earlier, the Cubists had named
the process “collage.” The Berliners
christened their version of the technique
photomontage. Unlike Cubist collage
(FIGS. 35-16and 35-17), the parts of a
Dada collage consisted almost entirely
of “found” details, such as pieces of
magazine photographs, usually com-
bined into deliberately antilogical com-
positions. Collage lent itself well to the
Dada desire to use chance when creating
art and antiart, but not all Dada collage
was as savagely aggressive as that of the
Berlin photomontagists.
One of the Berlin Dadaists who perfected the photomontage
technique was Hannah Höch(1889–1978). Höch’s photomontages
advanced the absurd illogic of Dada by presenting the viewer with
chaotic, contradictory, and satiric compositions. They also provided
insightful and scathing commentary on two of the most dramatic de-
velopments during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) in Germany—
the redefinition of women’s social roles and the explosive growth of
mass print media. She revealed these combined themes in Cut with
the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural
Epoch of Germany (FIG. 35-29). In this work Höch arranged an
eclectic mixture of cutout photos in seemingly haphazard fashion.
On closer inspection, however, the viewer can see that the artist care-
fully placed photographs of some of her fellow Dadaists among im-
ages of Marx, Lenin, and other revolutionary figures in the lower
right section, aligning this movement with other revolutionary
forces. She promoted Dada in prominently placed cutout lettering—
“Die grosse Welt dada” (the great Dada world). Certainly, juxtaposing
the heads of German military leaders with exotic dancers’ bodies pro-
vided the wickedly humorous critique central to much of Dada.
Höch also positioned herself in this topsy-turvy world she created.Europe, 1900 to 1920 93135-29Hannah Höch,Cut with the
Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last
Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of
Germany,1919–1920. Photomontage,
3 9 2 111 – 2 . Neue Nationalgalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
In Höch’s photomontage, photographs
of some of her fellow Dadaists appear
among images of Marx and Lenin, and
the artist juxtaposed herself with a map
of Europe showing the progress of
women.1 ft.