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

As the world changed, as the way of looking changed, so did the view of Schwitters’
work – or rather, it expanded. Increasingly Schwitters’ contribution to the Constructivist
Movement of the Twenties began to be appreciated. At the same time it was clear that this
contribution was only valid where it was not a question of pure Constructivism or strictly
geometric art, in other words, where Schwitters could remain himself. To this scintillating,
vividly alive, essentially unorthodox and above all humorous spirit the dogma of the
right angle must have seemed a starvation diet. Schwitters did enter into the Geometric
Abstractions and Constructivism of his Friends – van Doesburg, Lissitzky, Moholy-
Nagy – and adopted the principles of de Stijl and the Bauhaus; but in his best work he
transmuted these into something completely different: montages rather than constructions,
assemblages of raw materials rather than artefacts; a few pieces of driftwood found on the
North Sea shore rather than clean units of construction. The constructive had to embrace
the elements of destruction, decay and accident, nor did Schwitters think it sacrilege to
deviate from the right angle. Thus there were controversial elements, where others clung
to dogma: intuition instead of planned construction, invention rather than gospel. Yet
that too was a contribution to the Constructivist avant-garde of that time. And as neo-
Constructivist trends were surfacing everywhere during the Sixties, naturally enough in
this context, too, Schwitters’ name was retrospectively established.
But what about the later
Schwitters? The one who
gradually grew away from his
homeland, who ultimately,
after spending several months
of every year in Norway, never
returned to Hitler’s Germany
again, but lived out the last few
years of his life - 1940—1948 –
as best he could in England,
cut off both in space and
time from that international
avant-garde with which he
had once felt so completely
at home. This late work, like
the late works of many artists,
tended to be dismissed with a
shrug. The collages might be
accepted, but hardly the larger
works, of which he did many
Ernst Schwitters, Unsere Insel (Island of Hjertøya where
Kurt and Ernst Schwitters lived), undated
43!