I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT: PHOTO-COLLAGE, THE COUNTERCULTURES OF THE 1960’s and their AFTERMATH

Two Autobiographies

 That Hannah Hoch and Sol Lewitt would both create autobiographies using only collage excluding all manner of text  from their work is unusual.  While Hoch had previously dealt with autobiography as one element within a wider network of interconnected biographies, humorous juxtapositions of visual stereotypes and radical social criticism the Autobiography of 1972 that dealt exclusively with her own life was something completely new. For Lewitt, who was considered then (and now) an abstract artist and pioneer of rigorous conceptual installations and wall paintings, making an autobiography with a clear narrative line using then then informal methodology of the black and white Polaroid was unusual to say the least. The black and white Polaroid was an ephemeral, vernacular tool available in any drugstore and used primarily to take family snapshots. While the Polaroid would be used by artists as varied as David Hockney, Lucas Samaras and Gerhard RIchter, Lewitt had not shown any prolictivity toward image making, photography or narrative. What was going on?

Hannah Hoch Cuts It With a Cake Knife