abstract: The German Dada artist Hannah Höch is considered one of the most significant artists of photomontage. What is less discussed is Höch’s continued use of other mediums, particularly watercolor, and how the two mediums of watercolor and photomontage are combined in many of her artworks. Berlin Dada criticized bourgeois artistic groups and mediums. The Berlin Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann called for new ways of engaging with the medium of painting, which resulted in the group’s development of photomontage. However, other Dada artists such as George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, and Hausmann, continued to engage with the traditional medium of painting. Höch was integral to the development of photomontage. Like her Dada contemporaries, she also experimented with painting. She developed the new hybrid medium of photomontage-painting. I argue that Höch’s photomontages are better understood as photomontage-paintings. Höch’s photomontage- paintings combine the mediums of (watercolor) painting and photomontage into a singular medium. My reexamination of these works as photomontage-paintings presents a more accurate view of Höch as a multidimensional artist. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Art History 2015

The First World War had a definite impact on all of Europe, not to say the entire world. The domain of art was no exception. In Zürich, neutral Switzerland, a group of young creative intellectuals who shared a hostile approach towards the structure of the bourgeois society, with its non-democratic rulers and current nationalism which lead up to the war, united under the artistic movement we today call Dadaism. After the war Dadaism sprung up in several cities throughout Europe, among those Berlin. In Berlin Dadaism became a socialist weapon of propaganda, with its norm breaking artistic manifestations, against the camouflaged conservative government of the new Weimar republic. Their political and artistic struggle lasted until the mid-twenties, after that the gradually disintegrated. Reading the history of Dadaism some thoughts came to my mind. Dadaism emerged as a rebel against First World War and those responsible; still the movement lives on after the war had ended. What was the connection between Zürich-Dada and Berlin-Dada? Can you trace the First World War in Berlin-Dada expressions years after the end of the war? Examining three different works of art by major Berlin-Dadaists George Grosz, Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, I hope to respond to those questions in a satisfactory manner and during the process draw some essential conclusions.

Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht das Verhältnis Collage – Differenzerfahrungen – Künstler:Innen. Dabei wird die (Kunst-)Geschichte der Collage sowie die Perspektive auf Collage als künstlerisches, methodisches, epistemologisches und biographisches Prinzip erforscht. Ebenso wird – unter subjektivierungstheoretischem Fokus – der These nachgegangen, dass sich Differenzerfahrungen künstlerisch wie biographisch materialisieren und sich in Text- und Bild-material auffinden lassen. Differenzerfahrungen werden in dieser Forschungsarbeit verstanden als Reflexionen von Diskriminierungserfahrungen und von Othering/Veranderung (Prozessen des Gemacht-Werdens zu vermeintlich Anderen).Die vorliegende Subjektivierungsforschung – in deren Zentrum Leben und Werk Hannah Höchs (1889-1978) stehen – vollzieht sich zum einen anhand einer diskursanalytischen Untersuchung biographischer Textdokumente der Künstlerin; zum anderen wird ebendiese Textanalyse mit einer Bildanalyse der höch’schen Collage „Lebensbild“ aus dem Jahr 1972/1973 in Bezug gesetzt. Das Bild- und Textmaterial wird auf die (De-)Thematisierung der vier Differenzkategorien Geschlecht, Klasse, Körper/Behinderung, Herkunft/race sowie deren intersektionaler Verschränkung befragt und in einer mikrosprachlichen Feinanalyse anhand der drei Analyseheuristiken Anrufung, Selbstaussagen, biographische Erfahrungen auf die sprachliche (Re-)Produktion möglicher Differenz(-Erfahrungen) untersucht. Eingebettet in und in Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischen Diskursen von Kunst- und Sonderpädagogik verfolgt diese Arbeit das Ziel, Forschungsergebnisse zu Differenzerfahrungen/Collage/Künstler:Innen für ebenjene Disziplinen zu transformieren. Die Perspektivierung der Künstlerin Hannah Höch stellte unter dem vertieften Analysefokus von Körper/Behinderung und Geschlecht bislang ein Forschungsdesiderat dar; die vorliegende Untersuchung bespielt ebendieses und zeigt sich hierdurch zusätzlich transdisziplinär anschlussfähig an die Gender und Disability Studies. / This dissertation examines the relationship between collage – experiences of difference – artists. It explores the (art) history of collage as well as the perspective on collage as an artistic, methodological, epistemological and biographical principle. Likewise, the thesis that experiences of difference materialize artistically as well as biographically and can be found in textual and pictorial material will be pursued – with a focus on subjectification theory. Experiences of difference are understood in this research as reflections of experiences of discrimination and of othering (processes of being made into supposed others).The present research on subjectification – which centers on the life and work of Hannah Höch (1889-1978) – is carried out, on the one hand, on the basis of a discourse-analytical examination of biographical text documents of the artist; on the other hand, this very text analysis is related to an image analysis of the höch collage “Lebensbild” from 1972/1973. The pictorial and textual material will be interrogated for the (de-)thematization of the four categories of difference: gender, class, body/disability, race as well as their intersectional entanglement. In a micro-linguistic fine analysis, the linguistic (re-)production of possible experiences of difference will be examined on the basis of the three analysis heuristics: invocation, self-statements, biographical experiences. Embedded in and engaging with contemporary discourses of art and special education, this work aims to transform research findings on experiences of difference/collage/artists for those same disciplines. The perspective of Hannah Höch as an artist has so far been a research desideratum with a deeper focus on the analysis of body/disability and gender; the present study addresses this very issue and thus also shows transdisciplinary connectivity to Gender and Disability Studies.