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

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THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
the earth, he constructed sculptures and
objects which are among the most disturbing
products of his time. To the principle of the
object, he added a respect for life in the
form of dirt and putrefaction. […] Schwitters
suggested the irrational tastes that we know
from our dreams: spontaneity and the
acceptance of chance without choice.” 20
Apart from Motherwell’s anthology, at
that time there were scarcely any Englishlanguage
publications on Kurt Schwitters
or translations of his texts. Carola Giedion-
Welcker’s essay on Schwitters, which first
appeared in Weltwoche in 1947, and which was
published in the Magazine of Art as an obituary
in October 1948 with the title, ‘Schwitters:
or the Allusions of the Imagination’, was the
first extended, copiously illustrated text on
Schwitters to become available in the Englishspeaking
world. In addition there was also the
small pamphlet-catalogue produced for the
exhibition in the Pinacotheca Gallery in 1948,
with texts by Katherine S. Dreier, Naum Gabo
and Charmion Wiegand.
20
Ibid., pp. 163f. The text had been previously published in a very
slightly different version in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition
catalogue, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, 1936.
21
On Anne Ryan see: Anne Ryan Collages, Brooklyn Museum,
New York, 1974; Donald Windham, ‘Anne Ryan and her collages’,
in: Artnews, 73, no. 5, 1974, pp. 76–78; Anne Ryan. Collages from
Three Museums, Washburn Gallery, New York, 1991.
22
As quoted in: Painting and Sculpture from the Collection, Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis, 1990, p. 447.
23
Lee Hall, Betty Parsons. Artist, Dealer, Collector, New York 1991,
pp. 182f.
24
Laura de Coppet and Alan Jones, The Art Dealers, New York
1984, p. 23.
25
Peter Watson, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Castelli & Co. Der Aufstieg
des internationalen Kunstmarkts, Düsseldorf and elsewhere 1993,
p. 346.
26
On the history of the gallery see: Three Generations of Twentieth-Century
Art. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection of the
Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modem Art, New York 1972,
pp. 210–230.
Even if the gallerist Rose Fried was
more of an enthusiastic, idealistic art-lover
than a successful business woman and artdealer,
nevertheless her exhibition made a
major impression on the New York public
and, as we know, on at least one artist: Anne
Ryan. 21 Born in New Jersey in 1889, Anne
Ryan was already 58 years old when she first
came into contact with Kurt Schwitters’ art.
As a self-taught artist it had been some time
before she started to explore print techniques,
especially wood-cuts. She moved in artistic
circles and knew Jackson Pollock, Barnet
Newman and Hans Hofmann, who supported
her in her work. However, she only arrived at
her own language of forms – which brought
her overnight recognition amongst the New
York avant-garde – after she had visited the
Schwitters exhibition in Rose Fried’s gallery.
Her daughter remembers that first visit to
the gallery: “Mother went from one collage
to another in a passion of delight. She knew
instantly and completely that she had found
her métier. And she was practically exalted.
She had a great capacity for joy but I never
saw her so consumed by it […] We went
home and before she put water on for supper,
she was at her work table making collages.
During the following weeks she visited the
Fried Gallery a couple of times […].” 22 In the
six years until her death in 1954, Anne Ryan
worked exclusively on collages. Her works
were valued highly, yet her success is largely
forgotten today. These small-format works,
mainly in fabric and paper, display a fine
feeling for materials combined with a sense
of structure and pictorial composition; they
show the influence of Cubism, of Paul Klee
and – above all – of Kurt Schwitters.
In the early to mid-1950s, there were
at least four exhibitions of Ryan’s collages
in the influential Betty Parsons Gallery in
New York: three one-woman shows (1950,
1954 and 1955) and a joint show with Lee
Krasner (1953). 23 The Betty Parsons Gallery
was one of the few galleries in New York to
specialise exclusively in contemporary art.
Parsons had good contacts amongst important