In montage: The works of Hannah Hoch and Linder Sterling

The Berlin Dadaist Hannah Höch and the artist Linder Sterling lived several generations apart (Höch died in 1978, just as Linder was becoming known) but both are known in their separate spheres for their subversive, surreal and explicitly feminist use of montage as an art form.

Höch, while patronised by her male peers at the time, received critical acclaim for her political montages critiquing gender roles and the failings of the Weimar Republic, whereas Sterling was respected by her peers in the punk world for her montage work for Buzzcocks and The Secret Public, but it took a long time for her to be accepted by the art establishment as an artist worth taking seriously. 

I first came across Höch, needless to say, while researching Linder and later went on to dig out a book from the art floor at work called Dada’s Women by Ruth Hemus, which reinforced for me the extent to which women were minimised and written out of the history of Dada, much as they have been from multiple other art movements, subcultures, musical genres…  

In an essay concerning the two artists for the book Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years, titled ‘The Exploding Image’, Ariella Yedgar points out that both Höch and Sterling were women operating as the minority within male dominated, heterosexual creative communities, and that they were “very aware” of this. You can see the conclusion of this awareness in Linder’s performance at the Hacienda in the famous meat dress, whereas Höch’s work was banned once the Nazi’s came to power in Germany, forcing her to retreat but not to stop creating work. 

Is montage uniquely a women’s art form? Helen McCookerybook pointed out to me that one of Linder's targets in her work was the British pop artist Richard Hamilton, and his 1956 piece 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?', which suggests that montage isn't a uniquely female art form. It is a very accessible one though and I do wonder if the very accessible nature of it might have contributed to Höch not being taken seriously by the Dadaists in her own time. 

Both Sterling and Höch used their skills as montage artists to critique gender roles and society in their respective cultures. They created work that was unsettling and surreal, and that perhaps made people uncomfortable. It was easy to laugh off their work perhaps, rather than take it seriously, because to take it seriously might have meant asking awkward questions about the societies they were living in. And so called radical artists don’t always want to bite the hand of the state, especially if it is feeding them.

You can read more about the work of Linder Sterling in this piece from the Tribune last year. 

Cut Up: The radical collage of Linder Sterling (Juliet Jacques, Tribune)

Photo of sticker art in North London, 20222 by Ch_pski on Unsplash