Understanding Yoko

Still from Cut Piece.

Few names engender the shear strength of a reaction as the name Yoko Ono. Sadly, these reactions have more to do with a perceived pop persona than with the actual accomplishments of an incredibly brilliant artist. To truly understand this, her work must be understood in its full context, artistic, cultural and temporal.

Her work evolves out of the Gutai movement in Japanese art.  Gutai was the first manifestation of what would later come to be known as conceptual art, and certainly by the time Ono started making appearances in the west conceptual art had made the crossing.  Still, it seems important when talking about Ono to register the very Japanese origins of conceptual art.

Historically, Japanese Art had always looked abroad.  Originally, to China, but then after the Meiji period to the West, mostly Europe, and then after WWI, increasingly to America.  In Post War American Art, the center stage belonged to the likes of Stills, Dekooning, Jackson Pollock, and Rothko.  These were the young American avant garde pushing the edge of modernism into the future, or so claimed their supporters.  Spearheading their success were the greatest art critics and theorists of their day, Clement Greenberg, and Harold Rosenberg.  To Greenberg the power of these AB-Exers was the "paintingness" of the paintings.  To him, a painting should only be about the surface of a canvas and eschew all else. Anything outside of his notions of art, were to him kistch.

Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952.

His Chief Rival Rosenberg, on the other hand, felt very differently, both about the place of art, and the purpose of the avant guarde.  To Rosenberg, the Abstract Expressionists were great not because of some theoretical notion of a pureness of painting, but because they represented a record of action. The wild markings of a Dekooning, or the dribble marks of Pollock were indices of action, of an event.

Harold Rosenberg, By Elaine DeKooning, 1956.

These thoughts about painting, gained considerable sway in post war Japan. Artists, Such as Kazua Shiraga, built upon this model, Shiraga using his feet to "dance" markings on the canvas, in Painting with Feet 1956.  Ushio Shinohara, began his iconic works painting with punching gloves, (a later video of Shinohara).  These radical actions as art, took on a new theatrical momentum, combining with traditional Zen ideas, and the Gutai was formed.  This movement would see the first happenings, and really give birth to conceptual art around the world.
It is from this world, that Yoko Ono comes on the stage.  In works such as "Cut Piece"( Yoko Ono "Cut Piece")Ono married this conceptual bent to a challenging feminist and anti colonial narrative. In cut piece, the artist brings the art patron into the work, by inviting them to cut pieces off of her clothes.  This illuminates both the privileged position of the viewer, but also leads one to question the presumed nature of the power dynamic, especially of the body of a, here, very vulnerable asian woman.

Ono produces sublime works of art, centered on a conceptual tradition.  In the tradition of performance art that grows out of Gutai and conceptualism, she often repurposes the pop media for the purposes of conceptual art. To those looking for pop music, the affect is calculatingly jarring. Take for example her introduction of distinctly "un-pop" sounds into a performance of John Lennon and Chuck Berry: Yoko Ono on Pop Music.

One must understand these strange sounds as influenced by the theatrical questioning of artistic form, created by the Gutai, and eventually giving rise to performance art.  Ono recognized that she was interpreted in the west as an outsider, as a foreigner, as a woman.  All of these were used in her questioning of even mediums such as of pop music.

As an artists, Ono has matured over time, and the progress of time has been good to her particular style of repurposing in the pop medium for fine art.  One can see the lines between her work, and that of later artists, such as Mathew Barney cremaster.net.

That said I leave you with a lovely bit of repurposed pop, and it's a bit more contemporary:
Bad Dancer

A Queer Juxtaposition: Hannah Höch, Languages of Identity

Figure A

Hannah Höch, Das Schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl), photomontage,1919

 Today the GLBT movement watches as the kinds of victories seen once in a hundred generations, such as marriage equality, seem almost predestined. The inevitability of the arch of history on this matter is generally bandied about in analysis across the political spectrum (but it was not always so.) One would hasten to remind that even the valorous goal of marriage equality, when adopted, would not mark the end of the struggle for Queer liberation. This is because this struggle goes deeper than simple sexual politics (though it must clearly embrace them.) What does it mean to be Queer? The contemporary use of the word may constitute a fundamental division between forces within what was once deemed the Gay and Lesbian rights movement.

In 1992, in Durango Colorado, at 18, I
 remember group introductions at the first yearly meeting of the Fort Lewis College Gay and Lesbian Alliance. As we went around introducing ourselves and stating why we were there, there were a few “allies” (who I would later discover were in fact closeted gay men), and a few lesbians (one woman claiming she was a Lesbian in the context of her college experience as a duty to her devotion to feminism), but when I spoke I was proud (and nervous) that I was there because I was Queer. There was only one other attendee that also so identified, and a look of solidarity passed between us. Queerness was inclusive (especially of often ignored transgendered, intergendered and pangendered communities) but more than that queerness was a statement of anti-apologism. I recall a group of us being asked if we felt like women trapped in men's bodies (or the converse) and although many among us tried to make the argument of straight analogousness (corresponding really to a presupposition of heteronormity) I responded that I felt like a human being trapped in a man's body. In many ways Queerness may be defined as encompassing three distinct ideas:

1. Rejection of heteronormity and its ally the presumption of gender binary. (In both heterosexual/cisgendered cultures and our own)
2. A belief in radical acceptance of ourselves and others, the rejection of a norm.
3. The refusal of the concept of moderation in the face of the rights of humans to live their lives authentically.

 Hannah Höch, Cut With a Kitchen Knife..., Photomontage, 1919-1920.

In some sense, queer ideology may be understood as the embrace of the nuanced and complicated within the realm of human gender and sexuality. This family of ideologies rejects the notion of simple categorization or “one issue” discussions. In many ways the core of analysis of Hannah Höch's work was written by art historian Maude Lavin during an era of 2^nd wave feminism as part of a feminist drive to expand the artistic cannon. Because of this particular emphasis there is a tendency to play up the discussion of much her work in terms of the Weimar concept of the “New Woman.” While this angle is hardly without merit, it tends to simplify the subject by minimizing her queerness (even when acknowledged). Within the Weimar era work of Hannah Höch, we see an early questioning of the gender binary and the very personal story of an artist coming to grips with the meaning of her queerness. The tendency to overlook or minimize this part of her work may be remedied by close attention to lesbian cultural signs and by bringing to light information largely ignored or misinterpreted regarding intellectual conversation about sexual and gender ideas active in Weimar Berlin. Through a semiotic understanding of the cultural languages of Weimar era Berlin as well as the existing sexual subculture of the time and the theories associated with the sexual liberation movement, as exemplified by the theories of Magnus Hershfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, we will investigate the issues of queer identity in Höch's photomontages: Das Schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl), 1919, Russiche Tänzerin (Russian Dancer), 1930, and Die Starken Männer (The Strong Men), 1931.

Let us begin with two early photomontages discussed by Lavin, , the very early, Das Schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl), 1919 [figure A] and Russiche Tänzerin (Russian Dancer),1928 [figure B]. In Das Schöne Mädchen, a piece produced before her acknowledged female-female relationship with Dutch artist Til Brugman, we encounter an image that we are tempted to attribute simply to a feminist reading as representing the celebrated German “New Woman”, as does Lavin. Perhaps what would be lacking in her analysis is how much the “Modern Woman,” may have served as safe consumable shorthand for the subject of queer women (much as we will see that the politically driven decision to present the idea of the “third sex,” for purposes of building public sympathy, was made by sexual liberationists in this era.) In Voluptuous Panic Mel Gordon extensively documents the famously “decadent” society of Wiemar Berlin, in which he devotes a chapter to Lesbian culture. Here he notes a set of Lesbian types, that were active in terms of the common parlance and identification within Berlin.¹ Among the lesbian archetypes listed is one named “Bubis”, which Gordon describes as, “Masculine, or Butch Women. He reports they often wore men's clothing, especially fedoras and ties. Recognized by their long leather coats in winter and ubiquitous cigars. Some Bubis wore delicately drawn 'mustaches'(imitating Spanish aristocratic men).”² Importantly he adds that they were, “Reputed to be the best automobile drivers in Berlin.”³ In Das Schöne Mädchen we see a composition dominated by automotive iconography. Common to form, in her book, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, Lavin gives an interpretation that focuses upon the commodification of women.⁴ I tend to believe that here her analysis suffers from lack of attention to queer culture in favor of minimizing the queerness of the artist to provide an easy route to make a popular feminist interpretation. In her analysis she sums up the image as “a portrait of modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media, and advertising.”⁵ She describes the main figure in the following terms: “she is part human, part machine and part commodity.”⁶ This view, which seems driven by the popular discussion regarding “the gaze,” while definitely well placed, seems secondary to the core message of this piece. Looking at the image, in the back corner, we see a partially concealed head of a short haired woman. The main composite figure is seated with a light bulb filling in for her face, with a feminine hairstyle finishing the top of the figure dressed in a woman's bathing suit. Just to the right of the figure is a large wheel. It is perhaps conceivable that our figure is symbolically seated herself within an automobile. The light bulb-head would identify this figure as Höch herself. The light bulb represents the artist as the source of the “light,” the source from which this work emanates. If we interpret her seated position as being within the vehicle of the overall composition, then we must interpret her as seated in the passenger seat. The piston on the gear just to her left may stand in for a phallus (not to mention the steering wheel of this composite vehicle), and yet with a clock ticking (in the hand to the right of the bulb-head) one wonders if she is feeling like she is waiting for something else. It seems to me the automotive iconography paired with the short haircut on the figure looking from behind, may serve more as a sign of accepted lesbian typology. Is it the “Bubis” looking from behind, that Höch is awaiting. Note that said face has a feline eye, which may have erotic associations (feline nubileness, sexual behavior- Baste was the Egyptian goddess of cats was known for indiscriminate sexual behavior and wide sexual proclivities) as well as a sexual sense of being pursued. Gordon also notes that “Bubis” are attracted according to convention to a type refereed to as “Madis” defined by Gordon as “ Ultrafemmes.”⁷ This type would correspond not only to the accoutrements of the big-haired figure, but potentially to Höch herself as a feminine identified bisexual (if not by self-definition, by practice). Lavin's interprets the gaze of the figure behind as looking at the viewer.⁸ Alternately, I would propose that the face is viewing the figure at the front of the composition. In this way, we may see Höch longing to experience actively that part of her sexual character.

Figure B

Hannah Höch  Russiche Tänzerin (Russian Dancer), Photmontage, 1928.

In Russiche Tänzerin (Russian Dancer),1928 [figure B], two years after she began her relationship with Brugman, we find a much less tentative allusion to a Lesbian typology. Lavin relates that this figure has been interpreted as Brugman, and conversely that the monocle is used as a symbol of Dada in her work and thus the figure may represent a self portrait (in spite of the fact that by this time the artist had distanced herself from the movement.)⁹ In regards to the monocle (as well as the hair style of the figure), in Panic, Gordon describes a lesbian typology related here as Dodos. He describes this convention in the following terms, “Tuxedo-ed, sophisticated power women. Identified by their immaculately coiffed dark hair, which hung loose, gypsy style (called Titus-kopfs.) Their faces powdered ivory-white, they often wore horn-rimmed eyeglasses or monocles.”¹⁰ With this information, we may see this image in a slightly different light. Perhaps this is Brugman, perhaps not. Perhaps this is Höch herself, but if it is (which it may just simply be an allusion to complex gender performance entailed within these typologies) it is a portrait of Höch finding her legs within her own skin and claiming with her image a sexuality that according to Lavin she never claimed in public (Höch seemed rather verbally reticent about most of her private life, and this acknowledgment within her work may have seemed a more profound and useful one than any verbal statement, she was after all a visual artist.)

In Voluptuous Panic, Gordon also notes that during the great war a change occurred in the subject of depictions of sexual love between women, a switch that transformed it to something, “desirable and darkly exotic”¹¹ to contemporary (male) viewers. This is an angle on which Lavin relies extensively in her analysis. But this analysis neglects something a bit queerer. Within the secret signals of the “lesbian” community, employed in these two pieces we see something more than the simple voyeur relationship on which Lavin's analysis centered (and so much of the contemporary discussion.) Here we experience, in part, a specialized set of signs intended to relate inside information. Monocles, automotive symbols, even an understanding of conventional lesbian pairings within relationships seem to be in operation. Although Höch's relationship with Brugman would not occur till after the production of Mädchen, it seems unlikely (and somewhat a hetero-normative assumption) that this relationship of seven years would suddenly present itself without prior feelings or experience (one notes that the interests in the intellectual and bohemian circles in which she moved would often indulge in this sort of sexual and cultural rebellion without much note) or that when this relationship ended it would change any extant same sex desire (bisexuality is a real circumstance not a passing phase) contrary to the slant that we will see is implied by much of Lavin's dialectic. A queer perspective on this work allows us a view these works as both intensely personal as well as political.

To understand Höch's work we must also look at the queer cultures of Wiemar Berlin, in terms of a deeper understanding of the theories on homosexuality expounded at the time. These theories are popularly misunderstood even by many experts because of a simplistic understanding of what was released in the popular press for expeditious political reasons. In Germany, in1897 Magnus Hirschfeld founded the first organization to promote gay liberation, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee,.¹² Although Hirschfeld's Lehre der sexuellen Zwischenstufen argues “an encompassing meta-theoretical scheme of sexual difference in which all human beings are composites in different and 'irrepeatable' proportions of the poles of masculinity and femininity,”¹³ for the purposes of effecting change through public opinion, the Committee, in 1903 published a pamphlet entitled “What the People Should know Regarding the Third Gender.”¹⁴ Within this simplified political shorthand that was employed in this very widely read pamphlet, contemporaneous writers have typically considered Dr Hirschfeld's work. Thus as J. Edgar Baur asserts, “Hirschfeld's main theoretical achievement is the biologically grounded deconstruction of the Western ideology of sexual dimorphism that originated in Abrahamic creation narratives.”¹⁵ While the popular culture within the Weimar would likely be primarily acquainted with the point of view expressed in popular pamphlet, it could be argued, given the company of cultural and intellectual intelligentsia in which Höch moved, Höch would have some degree of familiarity with the more nuanced work of Hirschfeld's more academic theories. She would be familiar with his work questioning gender assumptions and explaining an awareness of a continuum of gender and sex.

The photomontage, in the hands of Höch, becomes a useful tool for the purposes of both exploration of personal sexual identity, and a means of what the Situationists would later call, “detournement” or the subversion of the images of popular and commercial culture for the purposes of challenging it. In an article first published in the Situationist International Guy Debourd discusses  method of detournement, whose notions were undoubtedly influenced by Höch (among others), saying,“Such periodical methods have often been used to obtain comical effects.”¹⁶ This aspect may be viewed in “mixed gender” depictions in such works as Cut With a Kitchen Knife...¹⁷, 1919-20 [Figure C],

Figure C, Detail from Cut with a Kitchen knife

 in which prominent political and military (male figures) are presented with female bodies for the sake of ridicule, as noted by Maude Lavin in her article,Spectatorship and the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch.¹⁸ . This viewpoint is, however is not representative of Höch's overall dialectic. Works such as these, and her early reliance on Lesbian iconography seems to be replaced in her later works with a more nuanced and deep questioning of gender and sexual identity norms.

We may see this turn in other works such as Die Starken Männer (The Strong Men), 1931[Figure D].

Hannah Höch, Die Starken Männer (The Strong Men), photomontage, 1931.

In this piece we may more closely see Debord's suggestion, “ to conceive of a parodic-serious stage where the accumulation of detourned elements, far from aiming at arousing indignation or laughter by alluding to some original work, will express our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original, and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity.¹⁹” Here she is no longer just ridiculing, or suggestively utilizing Lesbian visual language, but actively creating a new synthesis which suggest the beginning of a challenge to gender and sexual boundaries. Central to the proto-queer, proto-detournement perspective taking place in this image is the face occupying the center of the composition to which Maude Levine rightfully notes, how the parts, male and female, through similarity in the direct of eye focus, and the similarities of scale merge cohesively into a single face, while at the same time, due to gender cues refusing to resolve in the eyes of the viewer.²⁰ She therefore continues, “Thus subject/object confusion can occur in terms of gender, posing the question of whether one is viewing a representation of self or the other.²¹” While Lavin's analysis would seem poignant, it misses the mark because her focus on the importance of the gaze (well placed as it is) minimizes the particular brand of Queer detournement apparent in early works, but refined and in full force by this much later work. The reasons for this is most likely a short-coming in modern scholarship which largely ignores the presence of the more formal aspects in the work of Magnus Hirshfeld, preferring to assume that because the popular notion of “third sex” (which was a hard pill to swallow within the gay and lesbian communities at the time as well as today) is the only notion perceived to be actively challenging historical sexual and gender norms (as we have established this is just not the case.) Lavin's desire to avoid discussing the big Queer elephant in the room is underlined when she makes statements like, “By late Weimar, Höch's sexual identity had changed radically.”²² (bisexuality is real, she needn't “change” she just was.) Later on after acknowledging that her relationship with Til Brugman (identified as a woman) was “one of the longest and most stable bonds of Höch's life”²³, she then minimizes Höch's queer identity by saying, “It should be mentioned here that in 1935 Höch began a relationship with a young man whom she later married.”²⁴ While this is informationally true, her choice to include it right after a very truncated discussion of her (rather long) relationship with Brugman, reveals a desire to avoid her bisexuality entirety as a subject in order to discuss her only in terms of a 2^nd wave feminist agenda. This plays into a common tendency to question bisexuality, seeing it as either an experiment or a “phase.” Lavin also notes that it is unclear whether Höch ever identifies as a lesbian or bisexual, although she concedes parenthetically, “these distinctions were not so sharply drawn in Weimar as they are today.²⁵” Her presumptions about the intrinsic lesbianism, bisexuality or straightness of Höch, signaled by the language of “sexuality changed”, underlies a common bias that wishes to define the queer in terms of rigid categories. In this case it also serves a useful rhetorical technique, allowing the writer to side-step the queerness of the images in favor of a simple feminist dialectic about the “gaze.” (One that is not completely without merit, though none-the-less minimizes a great swathe of human experience.)

When we look to her work with an eye to queer signs and queer ideas in their historical context, this angle affords us a deeper, richer understanding of a work that dances up to the edge of the contemporary world. Within the work of Hannah Höch, it is perhaps possible to trace in the microcosm the arch of history that we, upon reflection find ourselves, not at the end of, but simply at the end of the beginning of. It is within the work of queer people, such as Hannah Höch that we are asked to stretch our assumptions about human experience beyond categorization. As these forerunners, living on the edge of historical oblivion remind us, it is a long way to where we are going, but perhaps with reflection and even a bit of understanding of where they have come we may get there. We can never again afford to limit our scope for the sake of a single objective. The third sex strategy ended with the Third Reich, which ended a lot of things... but not Queer people.

1Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic world of Weimar Berlin, (Port Townsend WA: Feral House, 2000), 104.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Maude Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) 43.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7Gordon, 104.

8Lavin, cut, 4.

9Ibid. 146.

10Gordon, 104.

11Ibid, 106.

12John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), (New York: Times Change Press, 1974) 9.

13J. Edgar Bauer, PhD., “On the Nameless Love and Infinite Sexualities: John Henry Mackay, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Origins of the Sexual Emancipation Movement,” Journal of Homosexuality, 50,1 (2005), 18.

14Lauritsen and Thorstad, 14.

15Baur, 11.

16Guy Debourd and Gil J. Wolman, “Methods of Detournement,” Situationist International Anthology, Ed and Trans Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981) 9. Originally published Les Lévres Nues 8 (May 1956)

17The full title of this work is: Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutchlands (Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany)

18Maude Levin, “Androgyny, Spectatorship, and the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch,” New German Critique, 51 SE (1990) 67.

19Debourd and Wolman, 9.

20Lavin, Androgyny, 72.

21Ibid.

22Ibid, 66.

23Ibid.

24Ibid, 67.

25Ibid.