Francis Picabia and Hannah Höch: The Sexualized Machine Woman – Between Projection and Claim

Abstract

Within the Dada movement, the mechanical object reveals social problems and identity crises. Avant-garde artists such as Francis Picabia and Hannah Höch use the motif of the machine-woman to project both their individual relationship to the status of women and the social changes of their time. The contribution presents two different Dadaist perspectives that point to a transnational discourse on the perception of gender and society in the early 20th century. Picabia’s oeuvre is about the view of a French artist in the United States during the war while Höch’s work deals with the self-image of a German Dadaist in post-war Berlin. The comparative analysis of the two Dadaists focuses on the motif of the machine-woman in art history and analyzes its different connotations from a gender perspective.