Raoul Hausmann - Painting with a Gun in my Hand

  Conrad Felixmüller, Portrait of Raoul Hausmann, c.1920

Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) was born in Vienna to Gabriele Hausmann, née Petke, and the Hungarian portrait and history painter Victor Hausmann. In 1900, Raoul moved with his family to Berlin. He left school at the age of fourteen and began artistic studies with his father instead. "My childhood was rather happy, because my parents didn't care about my private life. My father was very liberal. My mother was a beautiful lady, very distant and alien", Hausmann remembered shortly before his death. His parents committed suicide in 1920.

 Raoul Hausmann, Psychogramm, 1917

In 1905, Hausmann met the violinist Elfriede Schaeffer, whom he married after the birth of their daughter Vera in 1907. Between 1908 and 1911, Hausmann enrolled at Arthur Lew-Funcke's art school, one of the many private art schools in Berlin, where he studied anatomy and nude drawing. He worked on his first typographical designs as well as glass window designs, and assisted his father with the restoration of murals in the Hamburg city hall in 1914. One year later, Hausmann began an extramarital affair with the artist Hannah Höch, forming an artistically productive yet turbulent relationship that would last until 1922.

 Raoul Hausmann, Portrait of Hannah Höch, 1916

Hausmann's encounters with expressionist painting in 1912 (which he saw in Herwarth Walden's avant-garde Sturm Gallery), proved pivotal for his artistic development. He produced his first expressionist lithographs and woodcuts in Erich Heckel's atelier and published his first polemical texts against the art establishment in Walden's magazine, also named Der Sturm. Hausmann remained active in expressionist circles well into 1917, publishing two essays in Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion, a journal known for its leftist, antimilitaristic stance. As an Austrian-born citizen living in Germany, Hausmann was not drafted into military service and thus was spared the shattering war experiences that affected the work of so many artists. Yet his initial attitude toward the war was characteristic of the expressionist generation in that he believed the devastation on the battlefields held promise of a vital future, destroying calcified Wilhelminian social structures and clearing the way for a new world. 

 Raoul Hausmann, Self-Portrait, c. 1920

In 1916, Hausmann met the two men whose radicalism nourished this idea of a new beginning, namely the psychoanalyst Otto Gross, an anarchist and early disciple of Siegmund Freud, who considered psychoanalysis to be preparatory work for a revolution. He also befriended the radical writer Franz Jung, who was a disciple of Gross (and avid reader of Walt Whitman). Inspired by the work of Gross and Jung, as well as the writings of Whitman and Friedrich Nietzsche, Hausmann understood himself to be a pioneer for the birth of the new man. The notion of destruction as an act of creation was the point of departure for Hausmann's Dadasophy, his theoretical contribution to Berlin Dada.

 

Raoul Hausmann's Postcard to I.K. Bonset, 1921

Hausmann was one of a group of young radicals that began to form the nucleus of Berlin Dada in 1917. Richard Hülsenbeck ("To make literature with a gun in my hand had for a time been my dream") delivered his First Dada Speech in Germany, January 22, 1918 at the fashionable Neumann gallery on Kurfürstendamm. Over the course of the next few weeks, Hausmann, Hülsenbeck, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Franz Jung, Hannah Höch, Walter Mehring and Johannes Baader started the Club Dada. The first event staged was an evening of poetry performances and lectures against a retrospective of paintings by the "established" artist Lovis Corinth at the Berlin Sezession, April 12th, 1918: Hülsenbeck recited the Dada Manifesto, Grosz danced a Sincopation Jazz, whilst Hausmann ended the evening by shouting his manifesto The New Material in Painting at the by-now near riotous audience. The Berliner Börsen-Courier, a conservative newspaper reported:  

"The threat of violence hung in the air. One envisioned Corinth's pictures torn to shreds with chair legs. But in the end it didn't come to that. As Raoul Hausmann shouted his programmatic plans for dadaist painting into the noise of the crowd, the manager of the sezession gallery turned the lights out on him."

 Cover of Der Dada, Vol. 1, including a poem, Dadadegie, by Johannes Baader and Raoul Hausmann, 1919

As Dadasoph, and cofounder of Club Dada in Berlin, Hausmann wrote several key Dada texts, including the "Dadaist Manifesto" with Richard Huelsenbeck and the sixteen-page Club Dada brochure with Jung and Huelsenbeck. He also edited the journal Der Dada (above). The periodical contained drawings, polemics, poems and satires, all typeset in a multiplicity of opposing fonts and signs. From 1919 onward, Hausmann prepared the big world atlas Dadaco, though the project fell through due to editorial difficulties. In addition, Hausmann played a central role in organizing Dada events, including the First International Dada Fair with John Heartfield and George Grosz and numerous Dada matinees and soirées in Berlin, often in collaboration with Johannes Baader.

 Raoul Hausmann, Dada wins!, 1920

At the beginning of 1920, Baader (Chief-Dada), Hausmann (Dadasopher) and Huelsenbeck (World-Dada) embarked on a six week tour of Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia, drawing large crowds of up to 2000 people and bemused reviews. The programme included primitivist verse, simultaneous poetry recitals by Baader and Hausmann, and Hausmann's Dada-Trot (Sixty-One Step) described as "a truly splendid send-up of the most modern exotic-erotic social dances that have befallen us like a plague." Hausmann's artistic contributions to Dada were purposefully eclectic, consistently blurring the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, and dance. His "optophonetic" poems of early 1918 fused lyrical texts with expressive typography, insisting on the role of language as both visual and acoustic. Boisterous public performances of these poems not only underscored their vocal dimension but also transformed their two-dimensionality into a bodily experience. You can here some of his acoustic poems on UbuWeb; a few are even on sale at iTunes.

 August Sander, Raoul Hausmann, 1920s

From 1918, Hausmann incorporated collage elements into his work, influenced by war photomontages from the front that he saw while on vacation with Hannah Höch. He also manufactured several reliefs and assemblages. The most famous work, Der Geist Unserer Zeit - Mechanischer Kopf (The Spirit of Our Age -  Mechanical Head) was constructed from a hairdresser's wig-making dummy. The piece has various measuring devices attached including a ruler, pocket watch mechanism, typewriter, camera segments and a crocodile wallet:

Raoul Hausmann, The Spirit of Our Age - Mechanical Head, 1920

In September 1921, Hausmann, Höch, Kurt Schwitters and his wife Helma undertook an "anti-dada" tour to Prague. As well as his recitals of sound poems, he also presented a manifesto describing a machine "capable of converting audio and visual signals interchangeably, that he later called the Optophone" (after many years of experimentation, this device was patented in London in 1935). By the late 1920s, Hausmann had re-invented himself as a fashionable society photographer, and lived in a ménage à trois with his second wife, painter Hedwig Mankiewitz, and his new love Vera Broido in the fashionable district of Charlottenburg. 

 Raoul Hausmann, Two Nudes on a Beach [Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broido], 1930

Vera Broido was born in St Petersburg in 1907, the daughter of two Russian Jewish revolutionaries. In 1914, when Vera was seven, her family was plunged into a life of isolation and fear when her mother, Eva Broido, was sentenced to exile in Western Siberia for taking a stand against the war. Vera fled Siberia for Paris (where she studied under Alexandra Exter), and then moved on to Berlin. She never saw her mother Eva again and was later told that she had been executed.

 Raoul Hausmann, Study of Expression [Vera Broido], 1931

After his engagement with Dada, Hausmann now focused primarily on photography, producing portraits, nudes, and landscapes. After the Nazis had seized power in January of 1933, Hausmann,  his wife and Vera Broido emigrated to Ibiza. The photographs he produced focused on ethnographic and architectural motifs of premodern life in Ibiza. After the outbreak of the the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and the bombardment and subsequent occupation of Ibiza by Franco's troops, Hausmann (who had been active in Spanish anti-fascist groups) had to leave Ibiza. After an adventureous voyage he shortly settled in Prague, but was forced to flee again in 1938 after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. He then moved to Peyrat-le-Château, near Limoges where he lived illegally with his Jewish wife Hedwig, hiding for years in a small and humid rooftop chamber. After the Normandy landings in 1944, the pair finally moved to Limoges, where Hausmann lived in a secluded manner for the rest of his life.

The First International Dada Fair at Dr. Otto Burchard’s Berlin art gallery in 1920. From left to right: Hausmann, Höch, Dr. Burchard, Baader, Herzfelde, Margarete Herzfelde, Schmallhausen, Grosz (with hat and cane), Heartfield.

In the 1950s there was a revival of interest in Dada, especially in the United States. As interest grew, Hausmann began corresponding with a number of leading American artists, discussing Dada and it's contemporary relevance. He refuted the term Neo-Dada, then in vogue, which had been applied to a number of artists including Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, and George Maciunas, to whom he wrote in 1962:  

"I think even the Americans should not use the term "neodadaism" because "neo" means nothing and "ism" is old-fashioned. Why not simply "Fluxus"? It seems to me much better, because it's new, and dada is historic. I was in correspondence with Tzara, Hülsenbeck and Hans Richter concerning this question, and they all declare neodadaism does not exist. So long." 

 Adrian Ghenie, Dada is Dead, 2009

Raoul Hausmann died in Limoges on February 1, 1971. So long.

Hannah Höch - Brushflurlets and Beer Bellies

 Hannah Höch with her Dada Dolls, 1920

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was born in Gotha. Her father was the director of an insurance company, her mother a hobby painter. Hannah studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Berlin between 1912 and 1915. She finished her studies under Emil Orlik, concentrating on collage techniques. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for the Ullstein publishing house, designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame (The Lady) and Die Praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman).

Hannah Höch, The Puppet Balsamine, 1927

She met Dadaist Raoul Hausmann in 1915 and they became close friends. Höch was the only woman participating in the First International Dada Fair which took place at at Dr. Otto Burchard’s Berlin art gallery in July 1920. Among her fellow dadaists were Johannes Baader, George Grosz and John Heartfield. Höch's personal relationship with Hausmann grew from friendship to a  temptous romance over time, but they separated in 1922, partly because Höch didn't like Hausmann's insistence on an "official" ménage à trois together with his wife (Hausmann's dream came true in the late 1920s, when he moved with his wife Hedwig and his model Vera Broido to the fashionable district of Charlottenburg). 

 Raoul Hausmann, Double Portrait Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, c. 1920 

Hannah Höch - by now living with a woman, Dutch writer Til Brugmann, left a sketch of Hausmann around 1931:  "After I had offered to renew friendly relations we met frequently (with Til as well). At the time he was living with Heda Mankowicz-Hausmann and Vera Broido in Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße in Charlottenburg. Til and I went there often. But I always found it very boring. He was just acting the photographer, and the lover of Vera B, showing off terribly with what he could afford to buy now - the ésprit was all gone."

Hannah Höch und Til Brugmann, Berlin 1931

While the Dadaists paid lip service to women's emancipation they were clearly reluctant to include a woman among their ranks. The filmmaker Hans Richter described Höch's contribution to the Dada movement as the "sandwiches, beer and coffee she managed somehow to conjure up despite the shortage of money." Raoul Hausmann even suggested that Höch get a job to support him financially. Later, Höch ironized the hypocrisy of the Berlin Dada group in her photomontage The Strong Guys: 

 Hannah Höch, Die starken Männer (The Strong Guys), 1931

Höch observed in an undated note: "None of these men were satisfied with just an ordinary woman. In protest against the older generation they all desired this "New Woman" and her groundbreaking will to freedom. But - they more or less brutally rejected the notion that they, too, had to adopt new attitudes. This led to these truly Strindbergian dramas that typified the private lives of these men".

Hannah Höch, The Staircase, 1926

Höch was one of the forerunners in criticising society in the form of photomontages, a technique she developed in 1919. Her most famous piece became Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche (Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch), a critique of Germany in 1919. Perhaps it was the training at Ullstein that facilitated Höch’s finely-tuned eye for both snipping and re-assembling, which is so amply on display in Cut with the Kitchen Knife:

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch, 1919

Another brilliant and utterly ironic collage from 1919 (below) shows Friedrich Ebert (middle), first President of the Weimar Republic and his "bloodhound", defence minister Gustav Noske (right above), who was responsible for the assasination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht earlier that year. Both men are depicted in bathing suits with a fig leave - a symbol of innocence - before their bellies. The collage also refers to the so-called "bathing suit affair": After the liberal Berliner Illustrierte had printed a photo of Ebert and Noske in bathing suits, the right-wing press (which, a couple of months earlier had celebrated the assasinations of Luxemburg and Liebknecht) started a campaign against the "obscene behaviour" of the two statesmen.

 Hannah Höch, Dada Panorama, 1919

An exciting work during the mid 1920s was the ambitious From the Ethnographic Museum series, 17 works that constitute an epic foray into the notion of alien cultures and female identity (see Imaginary Bride below). It was visually influenced by the newly-redone tribal art displays in Berlin's Ethnological Museum. 

Hannah Höch, Imaginary Bride, 1926

Around 1920, the woman was for many artists the "eteral woman" or "world mother" - either a subject of their male salvation fantasies, or an object of morbid desires. Oskar Kokoschka spooned with dolls and imagined his Murderer, The Hope of Woman, Dix painted his Moon Woman, and Otto Freundlich anchored "The Mother" in the world of ideas of his cosmic communism. Marcel Duchamp built Bachelor Machines, Kurt Schwitters designed his Merzbau as a "cathedral of erotic misery", and Rudolf Schlichter's yearning for boots remained unsatisfied because he got the whole woman instead. And Höch painted Associations. In the center of the picture she placed two intertwined plant-like structures, engaged in a process of fertilization, whose blossoms are made of machine parts:

Hannah Höch, Vereinigungen (Associations), 1929

Höch’s focus on the nature of female identity (and its depiction in the media) reached a crescendo in the early 1930s in works like Tamer (below). Most probably Tamer relates to her new life with Til Brugman (they were together from 1926 to 1936). It represents the general move toward increasing gender ambiguity in Höch’s imagery, as can also be seen in her self-portrait Russian Dancer.

 Hannah Höch, Tamer, 1930

Höch made many influential friendships over the years, with Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters among others. She met Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian in 1924 in Paris, and a trip to Holland in 1926 was extended to a stay of three years. Here, in 1926, she met and grew to love Til Brugmann. The relationship, scandalous as it was for the time, sharpened her eye to the allocation of male and female roles. Höch and Brugmann returned to Germany in 1929, and  she participated in two important exhibits: The prestigious Film and Photo exhibition, the first big photography show in Europe, included 18 of her photomontages.  Some 10.000 people saw the exhibition on its first tour stop alone, Stuttgart. In that year, the De Bron Gallery in The Hague mounted her first one-woman show, which included her oil paintings, numerous drawings, and watercolors, though not her photomontages.

Hannah Höch, The Journalists, 1925

Höch’s public career as an artist was launched. Other exhibitions followed - in 1931 at Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum; and in 1932 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. The Bauhaus mounted a show of 15 of her photomontages later that year. This public recognition came to an end in 1933, when Adolf Hitler seized political power. Like all avantgarde artists, Höch and her circle were deemed "Cultural Bolshiviks" and "Degenerates" by the National Socialist régime.  Höch refused to support the Nazis, and continued to secretly produce critical works like the The Mockers (you can see that she was a brilliant painter too):

 Hannah Höch, The Mockers, 1935

As the 1930s wore on, Höch’s world became increasingly dangerous. She expressed her feelings of loneliness and isolation in her painting The Fear (below). Höch married the much-younger businessman and pianist Kurt Matthies in 1938 and divorced him in 1944. In September, 1939, a few days after the begin of the Second World War, she moved to the relative obscurity of Heiligensee, a remote suburb of Berlin. She felt lucky to have found a place where "nobody would know me by sight or be aware of my lurid past as a Dadaist". 

 Hannah Höch, Angst (Fear), 1936

After the end of the war, Höch was one of the first to actively revive artistic life in Berlin and to contribute to the gradual recovery of German art after the war. In 1945, she put together her Bilderbuch (Picture Book), a photomontaged zoological garden populated with Brushflurlets (below) as well as other strange  creatures, and accompanied by a series of sly, silly poems like Unsatisfeedle:

Flailing his arms about, quite a sight,
He had wanted the black dress
But God gave him the white.
So with his sourpuss
he lives out his life.
He nurtures the eccentricity
it’s the wrong one — explicitly.

Hannah Höch, Brushflurlet, 1945

Bilderbuch wouldn’t be published in its entirety until 1985, six years after Höch’s death, and then only in a limited edition of 200. Now, Berlin publishing house The Green Box has rescued this unique volume from out-of-print obscurity with a lovely facsimile edition that reproduces the poems in English translation. During the 1950s and 1960s, Höch produced abstract works but also a large number of highly acclaimed colour collages, which transformed reality in an ironic and fantastic manner:

 Hannah Höch, Grotesque,1963

Höch exhibited works at the large Dada exhibitions such as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1948 and at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1958. Other exhibitions in London and Paris followed. An important retrospective exhibition of Höch's work was organised in 1973 in Paris and then toured to her hometown Berlin. Höch died in 1978 at the age of 88 years in her house in Berlin-Heiligensee.