The latest episode of DIE ZEIT's acclaimed art podcast 'Augen zu' delves into the tumultuous life and radical work of Raoul Hausmann, a central but often overlooked figure of the Dada movement. In this forty-one minute installment, hosts Florian Illies and Giovanni di Lorenzo examine why Hausmann remains one of modern art's greatest provocateurs and taboo-breakers, despite his relative obscurity compared to Dada contemporaries. The podcast coincides with a major retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie, which runs through March 16 and presents the most comprehensive survey of Hausmann's work in decades. This timing allows the hosts to use the exhibition and its catalogue as a foundation for exploring the artist's complex legacy and enduring relevance.
Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) emerged as a dominant force in Berlin Dada during World War I, helping establish the movement's aggressive anti-establishment stance through performances, writings, and groundbreaking visual works. The podcast explains how Hausmann literally cut reality into a thousand pieces, creating collages of brutal intensity that dismantled bourgeois conventions and traditional artistic practices. His 'optophonetic' poems, which combined sound and visual elements, and his famous 'assemblage' sculptures made from industrial debris, exemplified Dada's commitment to reassembling society from its fragments. Unlike some Dadaists who treated the movement as a brief provocation, Hausmann maintained his revolutionary convictions throughout his life, consistently believing that salvation lay in tomorrow while dismissing the present as already obsolete.
Illies and Lorenzo devote significant attention to Hausmann's specific art-historical significance, questioning why his contributions remain less celebrated than those of Marcel Duchamp or Man Ray. They explore his pioneering work in photography, which he embraced after his Dada period, creating images of strange tenderness that contrast sharply with his earlier aggressive collages. The hosts discuss his theoretical writings, which anticipated postmodern concepts of media critique and the deconstruction of authorship. They also examine his relationships with women, particularly his eight-year partnership with Hannah Höch, who created some of her most important works during their intense and often destructive relationship. The podcast does not shy away from documenting how Hausmann's revolutionary zeal in art coexisted with personal behavior that regularly pushed his partners toward psychological crisis.
The episode features fascinating details about Hausmann's connection to photographer August Sander, who portrayed him three times in his monumental 'People of the Twentieth Century' project. The hosts explore what these portraits reveal about Hausmann's self-presentation and Sander's taxonomic ambition to document German society. They also place Hausmann within a broader network of avant-garde figures, name-checking Kurt Schwitters, whose Merz project paralleled Dada's fragmentation; Man Ray, whose Paris Dada circle intersected with Berlin's; and John Heartfield, who applied Dada photomontage to explicit political critique. This contextualization helps listeners understand Hausmann's unique position within an international movement that rejected nationalism while responding to specifically German conditions of war, revolution, and social collapse.
The Berlinische Galerie exhibition, curated by Ralf Burmeister, provides the visual anchor for the podcast's discussion, showcasing all phases of Hausmann's career from his early Expressionist works through his Dada peak and into his later, more contemplative photographic period. The hosts use specific works from the show to illustrate their points, describing how his 'Mechanical Head' assemblage embodies Dada's critique of rationalism and how his late landscapes reveal a surprising romanticism beneath his revolutionary rhetoric. The podcast format allows for intimate, conversational exploration of these themes, making complex art-historical concepts accessible to general audiences while maintaining scholarly rigor. Listeners can subscribe through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer, or directly download the mp3 file from DIE ZEIT's website.
