Many religious textual accounts describe provocative women: The Great Whore

from the Apocalypse, Saint Mary Magdalene from the New Testament, and the

Daughters of Mara from the Buddhist tradition are all accused of fornication or the

seduction of men. However, when artists have depicted these subjects, the women are

rarely shown transgressing in the ways the texts describe. The Great Whore is often

masculinized and shown as the equal of kings, Mary Magdalene assumes divergent

attitudes about prostitution in early Renaissance Europe, and the Daughters of Mara are

comparable to other Buddhist deities, recognizable only from the surrounding narrative.

Therefore, in this inquiry, I seek out the ways that artists have manipulated misogynistic

religious narratives and introduced their own fears, concerns, and interpretations.

Artistic deviations from the text indicate a sensitivity to cultural values beyond

the substance of their roles within the narrative. Both the Great Whore and her virtuous

counterpart, the Woman Clothed in the Sun, have agency, and the ways they are shown to

use their agency determines their moral status. Mary Magdalene, the patron saint of

prostitutes and a reformed sinner, is shown with iconographical markers beyond just

prostitution, and reveals the ways in which Renaissance artists conceptualized prostitution. In

the last case study, the comparison between the Daughters and the Buddhist savioresses,

the Taras, demonstrates that Himalayan artists did not completely subscribe to the textual

formulations of women as inherently iniquitous. Ultimately, these works of art divulge

not just interpretations of the religious traditions, but attitudes about women in general,

and the power they wielded in their respective contexts.

The German Dada artist Hannah Höch is considered one of the most significant artists of photomontage. What is less discussed is Höch’s continued use of other mediums, particularly watercolor, and how the two mediums of watercolor and photomontage are combined in many of her artworks.

Berlin Dada criticized bourgeois artistic groups and mediums. The Berlin Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann called for new ways of engaging with the medium of painting, which resulted in the group’s development of photomontage. However, other Dada artists such as George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, and Hausmann, continued to engage with the traditional medium of painting.

Höch was integral to the development of photomontage. Like her Dada contemporaries, she also experimented with painting. She developed the new hybrid medium of photomontage-painting. I argue that Höch’s photomontages are better understood as photomontage-paintings. Höch’s photomontage- paintings combine the mediums of (watercolor) painting and photomontage into a singular medium. My reexamination of these works as photomontage-paintings presents a more accurate view of Höch as a multidimensional artist.