The Art of Hannah Höch: Queering Collage via Jack Halberstam Daniel Fountain Material compiled for a conference paper (Queer Modernism(s) III, University of Oxford, 25-26 th April 2019) and also for a post on the Collage Research Network Blog, available at: https://collageresearchnetwork.wordpress.com/2019/06/13/the-art-of-hannah-hoch-queering-collage- via-jack-halberstam/ Höch became actively involved with the Berlin Dada group primarily through her relationship with Raoul Hausmann, one of the original pioneers of the group. Because Höch’s links to the group of Dadaists were almost exclusively through Hausmann, she always felt that she held a marginal position in the ‘boys club’. i Hans Richter would even come to describe her contribution to the movement purely as providing the ‘sandwiches, beer and coffee’. ii More women did eventually become part of the collective, but Höch recalls: ‘Most of our male colleagues continued for a long while to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status’. iii Though her work had been critically acclaimed and had appeared in Chicago at a May 1920 exhibition entitled Das Beste der jungen Kunst Deutschlands (The Best of Young German Art), fellow members such as George Grosz and John Heartfield did not want her to take part in Berlin’s First International Dada Fair. iv Although her 1919 work Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands (Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimarer Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany; Fig.1) was eventually accepted into the exhibition, they gave her the condescending pet name ‘Hannchen’ (little Hanna) in the exhibition catalogue. v Adding insult to injury they altered the caption label and deliberately misspelled Küchenmesser (kitchen knife), transforming it instead to Kuchenmesser (the less menacing and domestic cake knife). vi With her characteristic good humour and wit she reportedly cut out the misspelled label and added it directly to her collage. vii After an incredibly turbulent relationship with Hausmann, Höch then ended their seven-year relationship in 1922. But it was through their relationship that Höch had developed important relationships with others, such as the artist Kurt Schwitters and his wife Helma. At their invitation, Höch went to the Netherlands in 1926 to the home of Lajor and Nell d’Ebneth at Kijkduin. viii Whilst there, Höch met the Dutch writer and linguist Mathilda 'Til' Brugman. The women soon formed a romantic relationship and by the autumn Höch had moved to The Netherlands to live with her, where they stayed until 1929, until finally moving to Berlin. Höch and Brugman's relationship was to last a further nine years. i Paula K. Kamenish, Mamas of Dada (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2015), p.129. ii Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p.132 iii Hannah Höch in Edouard Roditi, ‘Interview with Hannah Höch’, Arts Magazine 34, no. 3 (Dec. 1959), p. 29. iv Kamenish, Mamas of Dada, p.129. v Kamenish, Mamas of Dada, p.129. vi Ibid. vii Ibid. viii Kamenish, Mamas of Dada, p.140.