Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

together with Alfred Barr and the curator
Margaret Miller, had been working on plans
to complete earlier Merzbaus; initially the
idea was to rebuild and restore the Merzbau
in Hanover that had been destroyed in 1943
during the war; later on discussions turned
to the question of completing the Haus am
Bakken, the Norwegian Merzbau in Lysaker
near Oslo which Schwitters had had to
abandon when he fled the country. However,
the wholesale destruction of the Hanover
Merzbau and Schwitters’ precarious state of
health meant that neither of these was a viable
possibility. By this time the artist was already
living in the Lake District, which led him to
consider undertaking a new Merz project in a
barn in Elterwater near Ambleside. The first
instalment of the Fellowship of a thousand
dollars arrived punctually in June 1947 on his
60th birthday, and he started immediately on
his Merzbarn. Yet this project, too, was never
to be finished since Schwitters died early the
following year.
In 1946, Schwitters also discussed
other projects besides the Merzbau with the
Museum of Modern Art: these included a
one-man show, another planned project was
his participation in an international group
show focusing on collage, which was initially
intended for summer 1947. However, both
shows were repeatedly postponed – and in
the end Schwitters’ first one-man show in
MoMA did not take place until 1985. During
the earlier discussion period, Schwitters had
already selected 39 recent collages and sent
them to New York in four groups. 8 Some of
these were shown in the major exhibition
Collage which finally took place from 21
September until 5 December 1948, after
Schwitters’ death. Nineteen collages by
Schwitters were shown, eight from 1946/47.
Besides Picasso with twenty works and Max
Ernst with twelve collages, Schwitters was one
of the few artists in this influential exhibition
whose work was shown in any great numbers. 9
This in itself bears witness to the recognition
he enjoyed at MoMA as a pioneer of the art
of collage. In the short introduction to the
list of exhibits, his Merz art is described as
being “distinct from the anti-aesthetic and
political directness of the Dada movement
in Germany” – a distinction that was to be
very important for the subsequent reception
of his work. Although Schwitters’ œuvre has
frequently been labelled as Dada, the qualities
of his more aesthetic approach had in fact
been recognised early on.
The exhibition was very positively
received and reviewed. The most influential
critic and promoter of the emergent Abstract
Expressionism, Clement Greenberg, wrote that
Schwitters and Hans Arp – even if at a “certain
distance” – could be seen to be following in
the footsteps of Picasso and Braque, the “great
masters of collage”. 10 Greenberg’s estimation
of the significance of collage resulted in a farreaching
reassessment of this technique: “The
medium of collage has played a crucial role in
the painting and sculpture of the 20th century,
and it is the most trenchant and direct key to
the aesthetics of genuine modern art.” 11
Since the planned one-man show of Kurt
Schwitters’ work in MoMA did not come to
fruition, credit for putting on the first solo
presentation of his work in the USA goes to
a commercial gallery. At the same time, the
8
Lists from the estate in the Kurt Schwitters Archive in the
Sprengel Museum Hannover.
9
According to the hectographed exhibition list 102 works were
shown. There was no catalogue, although there was evidently a plan
to publish one, see the letter from Margaret Miller to
Kurt Schwitters, 29 November 1946, copy in the Kurt Schwitters
Archive in the Sprengel Museum Hannover.
10
Clement Greenberg, untitled, in the column ‘Art’, in: The Nation
167, no. 21, 27 November 1948, pp. 612ff., reprinted in: idem, The
Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. by John O’Brian, Chicago and
London, 1986, pp. 259–263, here p. 262.
11
Ibid., p. 259.
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