Finds: January 12, 2014

Martin Schneider, "John Heartfield, the Original Culture Jammer" at Dangerous Minds (a consistently interesting blog):

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/john_heartfield_the_original_culture_jammer

Schneider is understandably excited to discover the Dada photomontages of Heartfield (1891-1968). I suggested to him in the Comments that he look into Heartfield's contemporaries and colleagues  Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) and Hannah Hoch (1889-1978), as well. I teach the three of them together in my Modernism course.

Schneider links to the first of an interesting three-part video, "Zygosis: John Heartfield and the Political Image." Here are all three parts.









It is quite possible to become confused by the references to Hitler and the Nazis being anti-socialist. Doesn't Nazi mean "National Socialist"? Yes. We tend to forget that the struggle between national socialist and fascist movements on the one hand, and communist-socialist movements on the other, during the Twenties, Thirties, and thereafter, was a a struggle between two different types of state-controlled economies. Laissez-faire capitalism, or any notion that the economy is best determined by companies and individuals working in their own best interests instead of the state's, simply didn't enter into the picture. Going back to mercantilism, European (as opposed to British) economic history is largely a matter of what type of state-controlled economy you are going to have, not whether you are going to have one.

Willi Munzenberg, the founder of the magazine AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung) in which much of Heartfield's work appeared, had a compelling and tagic subsequent history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willi_M%C3%BCnzenberg