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ABCD

1920s
Not on view
As a founder of the Berlin incarnation of Dada, Hausmann searched for a vital, disruptive, and realistic art, piecing together scraps of word and image—the detritus of the real world—to make symbolic and explosive new pictures. ABCD is a self-portrait. Below the artist's face is an announcement of his performance of a phonetic poem. The letters VOCE (Italian for "voice") appear inside an earlike ellipse, and the letters ABCD, a prototypical poem, are clinched in the artist's teeth. The tickets to the Kaiserjubilee in his hat indicate the empty formalities of the social milieu in which he functioned, while the intentionally provocative gynecological diagram alludes to the organic necessity of his art.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: ABCD
  • Artist: Raoul Hausmann (Austrian, Vienna 1886–1971 Limoges)
  • Date: 1920s
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 15.1 x 10.1 cm (5 15/16 x 4 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
  • Object Number: 1987.1100.58
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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[Window with Curtains, View of Garden with Figures]
Raoul Hausmann
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Untitled (Vera's Shoulders), Raoul Hausmann Austrian, Gelatin silver print
Untitled (Vera's Shoulders)
Raoul Hausmann
Vera Broido
1931, printed 1955
La Toilette, Raoul Hausmann Austrian, Gelatin silver print
La Toilette
Raoul Hausmann
Vera Broido
ca. 1930, printed later
Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann Austrian, Brush and black ink on paper (recto); charcoal on paper (verso)
Hannah Höch
Raoul Hausmann
ca. 1920
La Colonne Morris dans le Brouillard, Brassaï French, born Romania (Transylvania), Gelatin silver print
La Colonne Morris dans le Brouillard
Brassaï
1932, printed ca. 1960

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