Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch (November 1 1889 –  May 31 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. 

 Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media.

Höch's work was intended to dismantle the fable and dichotomy that existed in the concept of the "New Woman": an energetic, professional, and androgynous woman, who is ready to take her place as man's equal. Her interest in the topic was in how the dichotomy was structured, as well as in who structures social roles.

Other key themes in Höch's works were androgyny, political discourse, and shifting gender roles. These themes all interacted to create a feminist discourse surrounding Höch's works, which encouraged the liberation and agency of women during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and continuing through to today.

Dada was an artistic movement formed in 1915 in Zurich, Switzerland. The movement rejected monarchy, militarism, and conservatism and was enmeshed in an "anti-art" sentiment. Dadaists felt that art should have no boundaries or restrictions and that it can be whimsical and playful.

 These sentiments arose after the Great War, which caused society to question the role of government, and to reject militarism after seeing the atrocities of war. Many Dada pieces were critical of the Weimar Republic and its failed attempt at creating a democracy in post-war (WWI) Germany.

The Dada movement had a tone of fundamental negativity in regards to bourgeois society. The term "dada" has no actual meaning – it is a childlike word used to describe the lack of reason or logic in much of the artwork.

Höch is best known for her photomontages. These collages, which borrowed images from popular culture and utilized the dismemberment and reassembly of images, fit well with the Dada aesthetic, though other Dadaists were hesitant to accept her work due to inherent sexism in the movement. 

Her work added "a wryly feminist note" to the Dadaist philosophy of disdain towards bourgeois society, but both her identity as a woman and her feminist subject matter contributed to her never being fully accepted by the male Dadaists.

In the laboratory

This is one of several interior scenes in which Alexander showed people at work, surrounded by their equipment. The portrait d’apparat—an image in which a figure appears along with objects associated with his or her daily life—reflects Alexander’s training in the Munich academy of fine arts and showcases his skills both as a portraitist and as a still-life painter. His subject here is the chemist and assayer Thomas Price (1837–1912), and the setting is Price’s San Francisco laboratory. A consultant to international mining companies, Price was noted for his practical and theoretical knowledge of metals and mines.

Henry Alexander (1860 – May 15, 1894) was a painter from California. Aside from a few trompe-l'oeil paintings, his paintings generally depict individuals within highly detailed interiors. He is especially known for his paintings of men in cluttered offices filled with business furnishings or laboratory equipment, such as his several paintings of the mineralogist Thomas Price. He also painted Chinese and Japanese subjects.

He left San Francisco for New York City on April 15, 1887, in order to be at the center of the art world, but he suffered from money troubles and alcoholism. He had a studio at 51 West Tenth Street. The other artists in the building avoided him, because he was always trying to borrow money. 

Alexander's work attracted enough notice that the New York Herald described him as one of the creators of the modern school of art. On May 15, 1894, his money troubles led him to commit suicide by swallowing oxalic acid in the Oriental Hotel at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street. Many of his works were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Roff Beman

ESSAY

Roff Beman: Paintings

1942

ROFF BEMAN This memorial exhibition of his work will be the first one-man exhibit of paintings by an artist who was born, lived all his life in this University Community and developed his work here.

His untimely death, a year ago last summer, cut short the continuous production of the mature and highly developed work of one of the most significant Chicago artists of his time. Also the influence of one whose interest in the work of other artists had a far reaching effect in the development of their work.

He was born at Fifty-second Street and Harper Avenue, the son of S. S. Beman, the Chicago architect who designed the then model city of Pullman, numerous Christian Science churches, among them the First Church in Boston, and notable buildings here in the Loop.

He was educated at Harvard and the Art Institute of Chicago, studied printing and architecture, and under the influences of his mother, and accomplished amateur, also studied music throughout his life and was a fine violinist.

He pursued his studies of art and architecture in Europe, and then served in France during the first World War, where be was badly gassed. After the was he worked as an architectural draftsman, and, although he continued to follow his interest in painting, could not give his whole time to it, and felt great frustration. In about 1930 however, this became possible, and from this time to his death he worked intensively. No one was more successful in recording the atmosphere and characteristics of Chicago. Even though still-lifes and interiors the color and tempo of the city are expressed. Love of nature and the country, a feeling for the soil is shown in his simple landscapes of bleak winter fields and plowed earth.

All the paintings shown have been borrowed from his family, private collectors and the Illinois W.P.A. Art Project for which he painted continuously from its beginning.

He is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, numerous private collections, and much of his work, done under the auspices of the Art Program has been allocated and hangs in public buildings throughout the country.

This text was taken from the exhibition release.