Thurs. 10/7

Despite the fact that there was a ton of reading for tomorrow, Hannah Hoch really resonated with me so I'm going to just focus on her for now. It was interesting to read all the female perspectives on this movement, but both Hoch's medium of work and her personality really struck me for some reason.

First of all, on her character, I find it extremely odd that she would be making art specifically about women's emancipation/rights/what have you, and then date a complete mysoginst - who was cheating on his own wife with her, and beat her, and apparently even wanted to kill her - and then be surprised when his group didn't accept her or her work. However, I think that her work is what all of Dada should have been - she made a powerful feminist statement that was not original in any way, but as Dada, was much more meaningful than the work the men were making. I think so, anyway.

What I mean by that is, I look at Hoch's work and I can tell that she really felt something while she was putting those bizarre things together, and there is a distinct human aspect to it, like good art should have. With work like Duchamp's, I get the point they are trying to make, but I don't feel it - even after studying it or discussing I am still thinking "Oh, it's a urinal, that's lovely. You drew a mustache on a famous and revered masterpiece, good job, very mature. Look at this wheel... yeah."

All of these were very masculine, and although the Dadaists claimed they were making a stronger point about "fine art" or "politics," they were still making a point about masculinity/femininity, too. What really irks me about Dada work is that, for someone to be studying Dada without understanding the fine art they were mocking, it leaves no room for the realization about how deliberate (and, oftentimes, offensive or shocking) works of fine art are. Paintings of fruit or fish, for example, were often extremely sexual and MEANT to be; they were never intended to be simply "pretty" or entertaining or just a still life, and to the art community, they weren't. Traditional artists spent - and do spend - an excrutiating amount of time choosing every single aspect of a work of art, because all of those pieces have a distinct purpose and statement; Dada, on the other hand, is almost careless, and quite belligerent, which I just don't connect with.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, I like her work and the other ladies' works better than the rest of Dada stuff, and again, I feel that this is what the rest of the movement should have been like. I think that she understood the point better than the people who started it did.