For me Hausmann stands for Dada and photomontages. He , together with Hannah Hoch ( his longtime lover) developed a style of photomontages typical for Dada. Combining classical elements together with industrial elements set on o a colorful background these photomontages are among the very best from that period.
The photomontage became the technique most associated with Berlin Dada, used extensively by Hausmann, Höch, Heartfield, Baader and Grosz, and would prove a crucial influence on Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitsky and Russian Constructivism. It should also be pointed out that Grosz, Heartfield and Baader all laid claim to having invented the technique in later memoirs, although no works have surfaced to justify these claims.
At the same time, Hausmann started to experiment with sound poems he called “phonemes”] and “poster poems”, originally created by the chance lining up of letters by a printer without Hausmann’s direct intervention. Later poems used words which were reversed, chopped up and strung out, then either typed out using a full range of typographical strategies, or performed with boisterous exuberance. Schwitters’ Ursonate was directly influenced by a performance of one of Hausmann’s poems, “fmsbwtazdu”, at an event in Prague in 1921.
Raoul Hausmann and Dada publications are both available at www.ftn-books.com
