La Toilette

Person in Photograph Person in photograph Vera Broido Russian

ca. 1930, printed later

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.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Exhibition History

Title: La Toilette
Artist: Raoul Hausmann (Austrian, Vienna 1886–1971 Limoges)
Person in Photograph: Person in photograph Vera Broido (Russian, St. Petersburg 1907–2004 England)
Date: ca. 1930, printed later
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 23.7 x 15.8 cm (9 5/16 x 6 1/4 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Object Number: 1987.1100.74
Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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