John Heartfield

Exildah Chishala
February 15, 2010
LEH 300
John Heartfield

John Heartfield was a prolific artist, a pioneer of modern photomontage who was born Helmut Herzfeld in Berlin in 1891. When he was about 7 years old he lost both his father and mother.  When he was about 15 years old, he worked as a book seller in Wiesbaden; he later moved to Munich for studies.  Heartfield changed his name as a way to protest the World War I; he field ashamed and embarrassed to be a German.  Heartfield hated the war so much that he even feigned madness to avoid returning to the military service.  He later joined the Dada group of Berlin, and he’s remembered for being the first person to organize the first international Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920.  Like many German Artist of his time, Heartfield was anti-fascist and a communist.  His art was also revolutionary when it came to technique and taste. Most of Heartfield's art was targeted at Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany.  Heartfield uses is skill of photomontage to expose the contradiction between Adolf Hitler's anti-capitalist rhetoric and his pro-capitalist practices.

John Heartfield Arts

Adolf, the Superman, Swallows Gold and Spouts Tin, 1932
© 2006 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

In this image, John Heartfield potrayed the German dictator as a greedy person who greedy and thirsty for power under any circumstances.  Here the dictator's hidden agenda is shown through the x-ray of his abdomen, which contains a lot of silver and gold.  I notice that the rest of his body is covered in shadows while the inner part is clearly exposed.  This image shows that athough the dictator was anti-capitalist, he was also a fanatic of capitalism, and it was his greedy for power and wealth that lead him to commit the horible deeds he committed.

In this art, Heartfield portrayed Hitler as someone who was not thinking properly, as someone who was not using his brain.

 

War and Corpses: The Last Hope of the Rich, 1932

War is not a good thing.  The German Dada movement was born out of hatred for war.  Many Dada members felt that the war would have been avoided had it not been for the greedy of the rich people.  The result of the the war is destruction to makind, and that include both rich and pooer.  This image represents the end results of greediness.  Here the hynna is stepping on the corposes of victims of the war.  The Hynna represents the powerful whose aim is to destroy mankind.

John Heartfield was forced out Germany by the Hitler's regime, and when he came back, he started creating arts as a way to fight back the system.  He spent a lot of energy antagonizing the image of Hitler.  The image above show Hitler as an ape with horns.  Many people considered Hitler to be the savior of the German people, but what many failed to see was that, Hitler did not care about anyone, but himself.  It's like he came from another planet to destroy.