Das schöne Mädchen is a photomontage piece that was done in 1919-1920 and the title translates in English to The Beautiful Girl. This piece mixes various forms of technology and females forms. The work contains multiple objects stacked upon one another covering portions of the object below it which could make it complicated to fully analyze the exact intention of symbolism of the photomontage without any prior knowledge to Hoch and her work. Lucky for you, however, I do quite a nit of explaining that here n my blog and hope that you will be able to pick up on some of her intentions behind this piece.
In the book Cut with the Kitchen Knife, this collaged woman figure was described as “she is part human, part machine, part commodity.” As far as the placement of her chosen objects goes you can see In the upper right corner of the piece, there is a large hand holding a clock and a woman’s head peeking out. In the lower left hand corner there is a tire, with what seems to be a man without his head inside the tire. The color scheme includes some black and white along with a muted red and orange. There are round BMW logo's throughout the photo that add pops of colors like blue and white, and hints of text around the circles. Staying in line with the Dada style this photomontage includes a woman in the upper right corner who has one cat an obscene facial gesture along with a cat eye. It is said that the larger cat eye represents a monocle which became Höch’s sign for a Dadaist. A good description of this piece that was given by the book Cut with the Kitchen Knife, is “a portrait of a modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media, and advertising”.
In the book Cut with the Kitchen Knife, this collaged woman figure was described as “she is part human, part machine, part commodity.” As far as the placement of her chosen objects goes you can see In the upper right corner of the piece, there is a large hand holding a clock and a woman’s head peeking out. In the lower left hand corner there is a tire, with what seems to be a man without his head inside the tire. The color scheme includes some black and white along with a muted red and orange. There are round BMW logo's throughout the photo that add pops of colors like blue and white, and hints of text around the circles. Staying in line with the Dada style this photomontage includes a woman in the upper right corner who has one cat an obscene facial gesture along with a cat eye. It is said that the larger cat eye represents a monocle which became Höch’s sign for a Dadaist. A good description of this piece that was given by the book Cut with the Kitchen Knife, is “a portrait of a modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media, and advertising”.
Lavin, Maud. Cut With the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1993.