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

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INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr t 54 however, hung anxiety about the war and the aerial attacks. Schwitters therefore moved to the Lake District where nature received him hospitably. Landscapes and floral pieces came about besides portraits, collages and material images. Here his almost romantic inclination toward nature became apparent which hitherto had not played any decisive role in his oeuvre. • The only exhibition that took place in Britain during his lifetime was in 1944. It included more than 30 new works and, despite an essay by Herbert Read, an important art historian and critic, there was no sustained resonance. Schwitters the artist practically had ceased to exist in the public arena since the 1930s. In the United States there were individual attempts to arouse interest which, however, only bore fruit after the war. Although his health worsened progressively due to cardiac asthma, a stroke and eyesight problems that severely impaired his life, Schwitters created new works. Particularly touching are those works in which autobiographical motifs are legible. A collage from 1947 bears the title, A Finished Poet. Although the English romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is to be seen in a portrait from 1819, the parallel to Schwitters is obvious. Shelley, too, was forced by English society to leave the country. He died in Italy. Despite all the demonstrative persistence, Schwitters was all too aware of his tragic situation. There were phases of despair and depression; only contacts with the outer world were able to tear him out of the lethargic mood that continually recurred. Happily, with Edith Thomas, whom he called Wantee, in 1941 he had found a person who lovingly took care of him. He experienced Wantee’s care as that of an angel whom his wife, Helma, had sent him. When he received the telegram in 1944 with news that Helma had died of cancer, Schwitters’ past in Hanover disappeared once and for all. • The generation of artists who were reorienting themselves since the late 1950s took up very different impulses from Schwitters’ oeuvre, for post-war abstraction had exhausted itself, and the gesture of the artist who captured psychic and physical energies on the canvas had rigidified. The rediscovery of Dada gained stimuli mainly from New York where the artist, Robert Motherwell, edited an anthology in 1951, The Dada Painters and Poets. Kurt Schwitters, 1940s
55 t Ernst Schwitters, Kurt Schwitters, Norway 1933 • The book’s fourth chapter is devoted to Schwitters’ Merz art. On the one hand, the collage was re-established as an art form during the 1950s; on the other, the relationship between the art work and reality changed not only via this path. The art was to be short-circuited with the world, an aim which Schwitters had anticipated with his comprehensive Merz concept. In contrast to Marcel Duchamp, Schwitters remained a realist throughout his life if by this concept is meant an open, inquisitive stance toward historical reality. Realism understood primarily as a stance and not as a style — that was Kurt Schwitters’ cause. Duchamp’s search for the spirit of art, his irony, his periods of ‘silence’ and his dandyism were on another planet of modern art that orbited about itself. What the young American artists were able to take up from Schwitters was not limited to collage technique, for it had been used by many predecessors. What counted was the relation to the present itself in works that were apparently eccentric. Schwitters had employed advertising and public-domain images; he had wandered through his life-world with an open eye and had collected what seemed suitable to him. Even then he was a realist when he was not painting realistically, for which reason the apparent contradiction in the blocks of works is ameliorated. Not the technique, but the attitude was the message. • Much too late in life did his artistic work begin to be regarded for what it was: an epoch-making contribution to modern art, albeit a highly individual one by a loner.
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KURT SCHWIT TERS EXIBITION DESIGN B
Page 3: KURT SCHWIT TERS galerie gmurzynska
Page 6 and 7: “In part spurred by Rauschenberg
Page 9 and 10: SUMMARY 10 MERZ (Extract from “AR
Page 11 and 12: One could make up a catechism of me
Page 13 and 14: Merz House was my first piece of Me
Page 15 and 16: 15 Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 2. N
Page 17 and 18: 17 Kurt Schwitters. Anna Blume. Dic
Page 19 and 20: t Page from Schwitters’ family al
Page 21 and 22: t 21 t
Page 33 and 34: Almost all the pioneers of modern a
Page 35 and 36: ‘constructivist’ period, which,
Page 37 and 38: Sonata and after the Dadaists perio
Page 39 and 40: Ernst Schwitters, Photograph of Kur
Page 41 and 42: All this changed at a stroke with t
Page 43 and 44: As the world changed, as the way of
Page 45 and 46: 45! was exactly what he had done, i
Page 47 and 48: 47 t
Page 49 and 50: 49 t Kurt Schwitters, Hanover 1927
Page 51 and 52: 51 t
Page 53: 53 look down upon the apparent nons
Page 57 and 58: t 57 t The beginning of Merz theory
Page 59 and 60: 59 t t Blume and wants to love and
Page 61 and 62: t The consequence of DADA: MERZ ·
Page 63 and 64: t 63 t A radical act, whose radical
Page 65 and 66: tt65 The consequence of DADA: MERZ
Page 67 and 68: 67 tt (core Dada and Huelsendada).
Page 69 and 70: t 69 t Modern Age), succeeding the
Page 71 and 72: t 71 t BATTLE CRY WITH VERVE Merz 7
Page 73 and 74: t 73 t develop. There is only art.
Page 75 and 76: t 75 t to inspire the Merzgesamtkun
Page 77 and 78: l In the political and social chaos
Page 79 and 80: l Like Kandinsky’s abstractions o
Page 81 and 82: l 81 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchan
Page 83 and 84: l 19 Kurt Schwitters, “Merzbühne
Page 85 and 86: l by the times themselves.” 31 Bu
Page 87 and 88: l Kurt Schwitters, Pollfoss, 1947 O
Page 89 and 90: Kurt Schwitters, who knew a lot of
Page 91 and 92: you liked my sonata. May I introduc
Page 93 and 94: 93 Photograph of Helma Schwitters,
Page 95 and 96: Postcard Kurt and Helma Schwitters
Page 97 and 98: 97 Kurt Schwitters: A genius in fri
Page 99 and 100: the Merzbau in Waldhausenstraße 5
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111 journal Der Sturm (Monatsschrif
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115 artists. In the wake of this co
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p. 117-119 cover and two pages by K
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“I think I could do well in the U
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Letter from Kurt Schwitters to Kath
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together with Alfred Barr and the c
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exhibition in the Pinacotheca Galle
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and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim, who
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collectors and leading institutions
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he also designed the catalogue: a p
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141 All art of any significance com
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143 The extraordinary American coll
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145 What Schwitters describes in th
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147 It is perhaps pertinently stran
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NR: Tell me, Damien, when did you f
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as important as Marcel Duchamp. DH:
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NR: So what happened to the house?
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“Imitation remains imitation. Imi
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Kurt Schwitters, Auwiese, 1920, new
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Hausmann, and Hannah Höch, all of
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In November, Schwitters publishes M
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several weeks later becomes dictato
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exhibition catalogue. In November 1
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Original Recordings by Kurt Schwitt
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Collage/Collages from Cubism to New
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1, 3, and 4. Ed. Perdita Lottner. E
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The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Ka
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WWW.GMURZYNSKA.COM
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Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

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