Pissenlit en fleur 1932

Raoul Hausmann made this black and white photograph of dandelions on a small sheet of paper. It's funny, isn’t it, how some artists get fixated on a certain motif? I wonder what Hausmann was thinking when he decided to zoom right in on these dandelions? The texture looks almost prickly, doesn't it? I wonder if he was drawn to the contrast between the soft, round flower heads and the jagged leaves? You can almost feel the scratchiness. Hausmann was part of the Dada movement, and like other Dada artists, he was interested in disrupting traditional ways of seeing. I can almost see him getting down on his hands and knees, trying to find a new perspective on something so ordinary, like a weed, and trying to elevate it into art. What a Dada move! He was probably looking at other photographs and thinking about how to do things differently. Artists are always riffing off of each other. And I guess that's what I do too, in my own way, always trying to push the boundaries of what painting can be, and looking to those that came before me.