LAHL: Hannah Hoch

This week’s featured artist on LAHL is Hannah Hoch.  I must admit, at first blush, I was not interested in doing anything with this as I wasn’t really feeling the work.  Respect to her and the premise of her work, but it just didn’t inspire me.

Hoch History

Hoch was one of the Dada artists in Berlin and one of the first to use photography as a collage medium.  The Dada movement reflected the chaos and confusion of the postwar era while rejecting the moral order and politics that had supported inciting the war.

Makes me wonder what the current incarnation of Dada is as there is certainly a lot of chaos, confusion and rejection.

The part of the Dada movement that I find the most interesting is that it was an intentional anti-art movement that was quickly adopted by the art world and found purchase among the connoisseurs of the 20’s art world.  Part of me wonders if that is why the movement was so short-lived.

My Interpretation

Onward, I really like the colors and patterns that used in the composition and sought to do something similar for my piece.  I had bought this weird book at a yard sale last year and knew it would be the source of my collage paper for this work.

I started by painting the background in acrylic, feeling like I wanted a ground and sky and blending a blush pink with Payne’s Gray.  I love Payne’s Gray and use it prolifically. I then used the matte medium to start to paste and arrange all the pieces.

After I had everything in place, I realized that it was way too dark.  I used a white paint pen to lighten and texturize the background and added some details to the center of the flowers and the leaf.

I did hold true to the general form of the piece, but as always, there are some things that I would change if I were to do another study of this piece.

There is an important lesson learned in this study, I started out not liking the work, not feeling inspired by it, but I  took the time to learn more and to do some research.  I thought about ways that it could and would work for me and I went for it.

The lesson:  Always Try!