La Toilette

Raoul Hausmann Austrian
Person in photograph Vera Broido Russian

Not on view

One of the founders of Berlin Dada in 1918, Hausmann worked in a range of materials, making sculptural assemblages and photocollages, before becoming primarily a photographer in the late 1920s. This work, depicting a seated woman bent over her washbasin, is equal parts tradition and avant-garde exploration. Like nineteenth-century paintings of women at their toilette, the figure is presented to our gaze as an object for consumption. Yet Hausmann employed a steep viewing angle from above, disrupting our sense of space and direction, and refusing a coherent depiction of the female body.

La Toilette, Raoul Hausmann (Austrian, Vienna 1886–1971 Limoges), Gelatin silver print

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