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

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
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When the Dada movement arose in Zurich, Berlin and Cologne in 1916,
Kurt Schwitters was still a member of the avant-garde. After a traditional training
in painting in Dresden he had returned to his hometown of Hanover. Within this
context his work enjoyed a certain recognition, but the First World War broke out
and, despite his epilepsy, Schwitters was conscripted in 1917 as a draughtsman.
Already during his Dresden period he had a relationship with Helma Fischer, whom
he married in 1915. In 1918 their son, Ernst, was born.
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After his initial experience with modern art in Hanover, it was only through
Herwarth Walden’s gallery, Der Sturm, in Berlin that he made the decisive contact
with the avant-garde. There, after the war, Schwitters saw works by Marc Chagall,
Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. Walden had a feel for the talents
of the young man from Hanover who painted in an idiom of expressionism, futurism
and cubism. Schwitters remained in Hanover at Waldhausenstr. 5, where his family
lived under the same roof with his parents. In the years 1918/19, Schwitters broke
with his previous styles and began to glue and assemble collages and material
images. The first Merzbild came about, which contained the meaningless fragment
of a word, MERZ, that was cut out from the company name, COMMERZBANK. The
world war had resulted in Germany as the loser which, however, also opened up
new opportunities, because the Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands. However, the
post-war period also brought with it upheaval, revolution, violence and insecurity
in every respect. Schwitters felt the situation for himself as liberating. The war’s end
coincided with the discovery of his own path. He flung himself into activities of all
kinds: artist, advertising graphic artist, lecturer, poet, writer, organizer, publisher.
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Whereas after the First World War, Dada artists moved toward Surrealism,
Schwitters remained true to his own Merz cosmos. “Merz and Dada are related
to each other through opposition,” he wrote. Nevertheless he was constantly put
into a relation with Dada, although he did not want to belong to either this or any
other group of artists. He had a particular dislike for the politically oriented Berlin
Dadaism under the self-proclaimed leadership of Richard Huelsenbeck. Despite the
differences, it nevertheless remains sensible to locate Schwitters’ art in a proximity
to Dada. His personality had a structure suiting Dada before he was able to get to
know Dada at all; he was a Dadaist by nature.
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To establish his artistic cosmos, Schwitters employed two innovations that had
become significant in the cubism of Picasso and Georges Braque: the collage and