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

NR: Tell me, Damien, when did you first come across Kurt Schwitters?
DH: I knew Robert Rauschenberg’s work when I was doing my foundation studies in Leeds.
That was, I don’t know, probably in the early 1980s. I was making collages, but I didn’t come
across Kurt Schwitters until later.
NR: What were the collages like?
DH: Well, I’ve always tried to paint but I never could because I couldn’t work out what to paint.
I’d be sitting in front of a blank canvas thinking do I do a figure, do I do a tree, do I do, what
do I do? I didn’t know what to do. I used to get lost. I got drop spot painting – I loved throwing
paint around.
NR: Were you drawing?
DH: Drawing was something controlled that I couldn’t do. The reason I tried making collages
was because I saw a show by Francis Davison at the Hayward Gallery in the early ‘80s, I think.
NR: I’m not familiar at all with his work.
DH: Francis Davison was married to the Suffolk painter Margaret Mellis and he made collages
on torn paper. On foundation I made a collage which was very like a Kurt Schwitters, but at this
point I’d not come across him, and I remember one of my tutors came and said you should have
a look at Kurt Schwitters. And I remember thinking he must be an American artist because he’s
called Kurt. I thought, you know, he was like Willem de Kooning. So for ages I thought he was
an American artist. I just thought that this work was amazing, inspirational. It helped me realize
that because I found it hard to create things I could re-arrange already existing elements – I had
a skill for that.
NR: Did you know about his connection to the Lake District and Newcastle?
DH: I found out later. Elma Thubron, my tutor at Goldsmiths, told me about it.
NR: Related to Harry Thubron.
DH: Harry’s wife. Elma taught me at Goldsmiths after Harry died.
NR: And Harry was a kind of collagist.
DH: Yes, he made collages. Harry taught Marcus Harvey, who was at Goldsmiths before me –
he was a, he’s a friend of mine from Leeds who I knew before I got into Goldsmiths. He told me
that Harry would come into college and rip up people’s art!
NR: Literally rip up people’s art?
DH: If somebody had been making a painting he’d tear it in half and stick it back together the
other way round and say: ‘It looks better now, work on it!’ That forced you to destroy what you
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