Hannah Höch at Whitechapel Gallery

It never fails to amaze, the effect that pieces of paper stuck to other pieces of paper can have. A simple skill we all learn as children, inadvertently creating surreal and sometimes terrifying creations of anthropomorphic horrors and amputated forms (just me?) to stick to our walls. Yet in the Whitechapel Gallery’s current exhibition, photomontage is elevated to another level, one celebrating the skill, unique creativity and profundity of Hannah Höch.

In the first major UK exhibition of the German artist, the grossly overlooked Hannah Höch is finally given her day with a fascinating retrospective spanning her expansive career from the 1910s to 1970s. While big hitters such as Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg may have taken the photomontage limelight, Höch was an integral part of the development of the artform and a key player in Berlin’s burgeoning Dadaist movement as one of the few female figures to be represented in the First International Dada Fair. Because there is no point pretending, this is surreal, subversive and subtly politicised – this is Dada at its finest, and admittedly most accessible…

Beginning her career in the fashion industry, Höch’s early work sees her splice images from fashion magazines and journals allowing her to introduce her playful yet insightful commentary on a society in flux. But beneath the humour, these early works, such as ‘High Finance’ exploring the economic crisis, already demonstrate Höch’s deep engagement with the political, and her fearlessness to play with it. Perhaps a fearlessness that is most prevalent in ‘Heads of State’ where she places shirtless politicians before an embroidered, cartoon-like seascape – certainly a more artistic piece of satire than a pencil sketch at the bottom of a newspaper.

Höch’s view of the ‘woman’ is given a worthy platform, as she quite literally dissects figures of womanhood, reassembling them with traditional tribal masks in the ‘From an Ethnographic Museum’ series. This idea of dissembling – or rather dismembering – and reassembling to create new meaning is one that prevails throughout, whether it be for examinations of femininity, race, society or politics. Through her minute details, we are able to explore a deeper picture.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the exhibition is its distinct chronology and correlative transformation Höch’s work undergoes over her lengthy career, living through the Wars and the consequent cultural changes taking place in Germany. Closing the exhibition, her ‘Life Portrait’ is a touching finish, a scrapbook collage of personal photos and sketches of herself and those who inspired and influenced her over the years.  And her cats. Perhaps not as artistically profound as the works seen before but it is here we see the real evidence of Höch’s artistic eye, one that can piece together the many to make a whole and creating meaning from the scraps.

Humorous and astute with a quiet eroticism, Hannah Höch’s long overdue retrospective is an inspiring look at Dada’s elusive ‘it’ girl – it’s just a shame it took the contemporary art world so long to notice.

Hannah Höch is showing until Sunday 23 March at:

Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
Whitechapel
E1 7QX

Image: Ohne Titel’ (1930) by Hannah Höch