IN FEAR AND TREPIDATION

H.H. Cut with the Kirchen Knife

So over to London for a few days with Pierrette. The tremendous winds and rain calmed down and apart from me choosing the wrong exit to join up we were on our way to a new part of town, a new gallery and a new hotel. A few Parisian friends had told me about the Whitechapel gallery. There had been an article in Beaux Art magazine for the exhibition I wanted us both to see. Hannah Höch, a Dadaist who I had discovered in Switzerland many moons ago. It was an important discovery for me. My Mother was very much in her collage period at the time. I knew nothing about Dada. I did know quite a lot about collage. Imagine my delight when I discovered that I was presenting a new artist to my mother? It was probably a one and only but it led me into the period in question and to the discovery of new or other artists.

Dada? Even today when I hear the word I hear a baby pronouncing his first word. Perhaps the movement was a little more sophisticated than that! Dada artists of the early 20th century were constantly deconstructing the imagery around them, using scissors and glue to craft new objects from mundane, everyday items. Photomontage, collage and assemblage reigned supreme, as artists like Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Jean Arp built their own brand of anti-establishment art making. The emphasis was always on the anti, be it anti-war, anti-bourgeois, or even anti-art.


H.H.(1889-1978)  was the only woman artist in the group. It was also difficult for her to be accepted. Even her companion of the time, Raoul Hausmann, thought she should stay and home and doing something else. Considering her character, I doubt if that went down very well. 

Self portrait in the 20's

 Until seeing the exhibition I was convinced she was Schwitter's companion. Her bisexuality left me a little confused. Höch left her seven-year relationship with Raoul Hausmann in 1922. In 1926, she began a relationship with the Dutch writer and linguist Mathilda Brugman, whom Höch met through mutual friends Kurt and Helma Schwitters. By autumn of 1926, Höch moved to Hague to live with Brugman, where they lived until 1929, at which time they moved to Berlin. They did not explicitly define their relationship as lesbian but private love. In 1935, Höch began a relationship with Kurt Matthies, whom she was married to from 1938-1944. It’s certainly a little confusing and because of her sexual duality I was even more surprised that my Mother knew nothing about her.
 Apart from her work, she was not, in my book, a very attractive woman when young but in her latter years, she was a beauty. Unfortunately I did not find a suitable photo on Internet to demonstrate this. 

1939

Strange and beautiful 1966

Little Sun 1969

Around a red mouth 1967

Flight 1931

Heads of State

Untitled 1930

Made for a party 1936

Grotte and I do like this.....

The exhibition brought together over 100 works from International collections. In actual fact there was not too much that I really could write home about. Collage was the important element in her life. 

There are an overwhelming number of sites which describe her work on Internet. Looking at it like that makes the different periods even more difficult to follow. But her first works I did like. Perhaps not the last.

Pierrette opted to go to the Saatchi Gallery after lunch keeping the following day free. Just as well as the underground was to be on strike and the weather forecast sounded dreary.

This is a centre which I have been wanting to visit for a long time. The Pinault collection is probably the French equivalent. You may remember that Jerome, Laurent and I have visited the Palazzo Grazzi and the Ponta della Dogana in Venice twice. Something always comes out of these visits even if over all we are not too keen on his collections. The « Body Language » exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery was of interest to me after all those years of studying semiotics.

I go along to such exhibitions with some trepidation.

There are times you find room after room of dull, meaningless pieces veering between the pretentious and the banal, that try as you might you can find no connection with.

That, I guess, is the risk of trying to find something that takes contemporary art in a fresh direction.


Saatchi's principal raison d'être, is to discover new talent, nurture it and bring it to a squeamish public in a palatable way. From my point of view, Pinault has the same outlook.

They might be making oodles of cash for themselves in the process, but then the relationship between artist and facilitator has always been first and foremost a business.

"Body Language" quite simply takes representations of the human form as its binding theme. It includes a fair bit of figurative painting, some dramatic photographic essays and the type of humorous sculpture and installation works that  both Saatchi and Pinault  always go out of their way to achieve. I don’t have to add that there was not one artist known to me…here is quite a selection of works we saw. I could see that Pierrette was not impressed - but let’s face it, neither was I. Finally though, when going through all the photos here, a lot of the work I did like. Strange isn't it? Sometimes the photos seem to be more interesting than the real thing.

Henry Taylor -2008

Makiko Kudo 2010 - Burning red

Makiko Kudo 2010 - Floating island

Makiko Kudo 2010 - Invisible

Makiko Kudo 2010 - I see season

The Feast by Eddie Martinez.

Justin Matherly - All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare 2011

Dana Schutz 2008 - Reformers

Chantal Joffe 2004

Chantal Joffe 2004

Chantal Joffe 2004

Chantal Joffe 2004

Chantal Joffe Walking woman 2004

Chantal Joffe 2004

Kasper Kovitz -2010 - Iberico Ham

Michael Cline - That's That - 2008

The cat, lower right in the Beer Garden

Nicole Eisenmen - Beer garden at night 2007

Chantal Joffe -Woman,with Flowers 2004

Chantal Joffe 2004

Kasper Kovitz -2010 - Iberico Ham

Alexander Tinei - Music Teacher 2009

Jansson Stegner  2006

Jansson Stegner  2006

Nicole Eisenman Beasley Street 2007

All the artists