The New Criterion

There is a gratifying modesty in how “The Photomontages of Hannah Höch”[1] at the Museum of Modern Art has been properly, if not perfectly, scaled to its subject. Hannah Höch (1889–1978) was the sole woman artist associated with Berlin Dada, a group known for its strident politics and anti-art stance. In contrast to renowned Dadaists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, Höch has been, until recently, a modernist footnote. At the time of her death in 1978, she was remembered as the “Bobhaired Muse of the Men’s Club” and, most infamously, the “good girl” of Dada, a moniker given to her by the artist Hans Richter. The exhibition at MOMA attempts to correct this dubious recognition by spotlighting the work for which she is best known, and though the hundred or so photomontages on view are a ...

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