After being assigned this project, I was a little lost on where to start. While I have created collages before, they were for fun and not part of a project, nor did they have to respond to any other artists work. My work with college in the past was purely a creative outlet. My initial idea was to create a work in a completely different style that I have done in the past. However, after completing a few test collages, I realized that this mentality was not going to work. It stifled my creativity and ultimately made my collages far less interesting. For my final works, I tried to create a happy medium between influence from other collage style and my own creativity.
The two artists that I researched and work I was drawn to were Hannah Hoch and Varvara Stepanova. Both artists worked in the 1920s, but both had a very different style and visual aesthetic.
Hannah Hoch is a Dada artist who is best known for her work as a Photomontage artists as she was one of the pioneers of the technique. Photomontage as defined by Artsy, is “A technique best known for its close ties to Dada, photomontage is a type of collage in which photographs (either taken by the artist or sourced from mass media) are assembled into a single composition.” She was fairly well recognized for her contributions to this art form as well as the dada movement.
In addition to Hannah Hoch, I did research on Varvara Stepanova. While producing work at the same time as Hoch, the two have very different artistic styles. Stepanova was not known as a photomontage artist and is most recognized for her work in other disciplines. Despite this, here collages are very successful and an interesting source of inspiration in my own work.
The parts of my work where I used Hannah Hoch as inspiration can be seen in the black and white found fashion imagery and how it is arranged. She not only used a lot of black and white photography but also arranged them in such ways where bodies were matched with different heads and alternate perspectives were created. I tried to emulate this style in three places within my collages; the eye that utilized a cutout and other imagery to recreate its brow, the fence with the feet recreating foliage, and the sardine can with body parts coming out.
As far as my inspiration from Varvara Stepanova goes, I used her use of repetition and strong contrasting imagery within my collage. This can be seen in the three pairs of legs with the reattached heads. It can also be seen in my use of backgrounds and using a pattern in multiple different places.
Ultimately I think my college was successful in its use of inspiration from other artists while still incorporating some of my own personal style and aesthetics. It is a fine line between references and plagiarism, if done correctly it can amplify a message and add to an already existing conversation.
Hannah Hoch, Angst
Hannah Hoch, Untitled
Hannah Hoch, Untitled
Hannah Hoch, Indian Dancer
Varvara Stepanova, Red Army Man
Research:
Höch Hannah. The Photomontages of Hannah Höch: February 27 through May 20, 1997, the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Walker Art Center, 1997.
Melanie. “Badass Lady Creatives [in History]: Varvara Stepanova.” Design Work Life, 25 Dec. 2013, www.designworklife.com/2013/12/25/ladies-in-history-varvara-stepanova/.
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