Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst
Fully illustrated catalog published by Galerie Gmurzynska in collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire Zurich on the occasion of Kurt Schwitters: MERZ, a major retrospective exhibition celebrating 100 years of Dada. The exhibition builds and expands on the gallery’s five decade long exhibition history with the artist, featuring exhibition architecture by Zaha Hadid. Edited by Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer. First of three planned volumes containing original writings by Kurt Schwitters, historical essays by Ernst Schwitters, Ad Reinhardt and Werner Schmalenbach as well as text contributions by Siegfried Gohr, Adrian Notz, Jonathan Fineberg, Karin Orchard, and Flavin Judd. Foreword by Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer. Interview with Damien Hirst conducted by Norman Rosenthal. Includes full color plates and archival photographs. 174 pages, color and b/w illustrations. English. ISBN: 978-3-905792-33-1 The publication includes an Interview with Damien Hirst by Sir Norman Rosenthal about the importance of Kurt Schwitters's practice for Hirst's work.
Fully illustrated catalog published by Galerie Gmurzynska in collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire Zurich on the occasion of Kurt Schwitters: MERZ, a major retrospective exhibition celebrating 100 years of Dada. The exhibition builds and expands on the gallery’s five decade long exhibition history with the artist, featuring exhibition architecture by Zaha Hadid.
Edited by Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer.
First of three planned volumes containing original writings by Kurt Schwitters, historical essays by Ernst Schwitters, Ad Reinhardt and Werner Schmalenbach as well as text contributions by Siegfried Gohr, Adrian Notz, Jonathan Fineberg, Karin Orchard, and Flavin Judd.
Foreword by Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer.
Interview with Damien Hirst conducted by Norman Rosenthal.
Includes full color plates and archival photographs.
174 pages, color and b/w illustrations.
English.
ISBN:
978-3-905792-33-1
The publication includes an Interview with Damien Hirst by Sir Norman Rosenthal about the importance of Kurt Schwitters's practice for Hirst's work.
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t<br />
57<br />
t<br />
The beginning of <strong>Merz</strong> theory can be traced back to the origin of the so-called <strong>Merz</strong>bild<br />
of 1919, a collage on which <strong>Schwitters</strong> glued, between abstract shapes, the word MERZ that<br />
he had cut out of an advertisement of the KOMMERZ and PRIVATBANK 2 . This is where<br />
<strong>Schwitters</strong> came upon the word <strong>Merz</strong>. At the beginning of the evolution of <strong>Merz</strong> as a theory,<br />
though, there is a woman: Anna Blume. It<br />
is her who stimulates <strong>Merz</strong> and in the first<br />
<strong>Merz</strong>gedicht (<strong>Merz</strong>poem), she stands at<br />
the beginning of an evolution. The great<br />
yearning and wonderfully playful, tender<br />
declaration of love, that the “I” in An<br />
Anna Blume (To Anna Blume) professes,<br />
is already dissolved a few pages later in<br />
the 8 th <strong>Merz</strong>gedicht, in an execution of<br />
oneself. One realizes that Anna Blume<br />
will never be reached, as she merely is<br />
an illusion, a creation that stems from<br />
the longing imagination of the “I”. This<br />
realization, that a fictitious entity is able to<br />
create a real yearning, triggers an equally<br />
real self-dissolution, which finds its poetic<br />
expression in the 8 th <strong>Merz</strong>gedicht with<br />
its trivial title Die Zwiebel (The Onion):<br />
“It was a very momentous day, the day<br />
on which I was to be slaughtered.” 3 This<br />
“I” is being killed and slaughtered in Die<br />
Zwiebel, and describes all incidents as an<br />
observer of his own slaughter, but from<br />
a subjective point of view. It reaches a<br />
point where the king – a princess makes<br />
an appearance as well, she even sings<br />
<strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>’ workers’ song 4 – drinks<br />
from the blood of the slaughtered, which<br />
turns out to be corrosive to an extent as<br />
it poisons and eventually kills him. After that, the slaughtered is being put back together, the<br />
blood infused, the inner organs placed in his body and finally the split skull is being closed up<br />
The consequence of DADÁ MERZ · by Adrian Notz<br />
<strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, Memoiren Anna Blumes in Bleie. Eine leichtfassliche Methode zur Entfernung<br />
des Wahnsinns für Jedermann, Walter Heinrich Verlag, Freiburg (Baden) 1922<br />
1<br />
MERZ 20: <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong> catalogue, 1927<br />
2<br />
Ibid. p. 99<br />
3<br />
Die Zwiebel, ibid., p. 16<br />
4<br />
Cf. Ibid., p. 19, also published in Sturm Bilderbücher, IV, <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, Berlin 1920, p. 4
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