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

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t 58 again, so that he can be brought back to life. The princess begs the formerly slaughtered for help in order to bring the king back to life, but he decides the king stay dead. He kills the king by means of his own slaughter; not only does he leave him lying dead, but he also orders that two yellow candles be inserted in the holes in the king’s gut and that they be lit, whereupon the king – given the corrosive blood of the slaughtered – explodes. “The people called out a rousing hip-hip-hurray on my behalf” 5 . Following the torn king, Schwitters continues the scent of death in Das Verwesungswesen (The Nature of Decay) 6 and he refers to Anna Blume directly: “Trumpet climb Anna Blume elephant.” “You. – I cannot withhold the great walk from you either” 7 . After slaughtering himself and murdering the king, Schwitters turns towards Anna Blume and covers her with the scent of death by pointing out that Anna Blume and Arnold Böcklin have the same initials, creating an immediate memento mori of Arnold Böcklin. Thus, in the Merzgedicht 9, Anna Blume’s execution is demanded 8 . Schwitters does not execute her himself, but lets her die poetically, as “Die Hinrichtung” (The Execution) ends with: “Poor legs lower bodies. Anna Blume greens the withering.” 9 Regicide Schwitters soars from this low point, this withered, upsetting situation, and launches the Merzbühne (Merzstage). After the bitter loss of the love of his life and of himself, the Merzbühne now serves as a radiant, defying Bachelor Machine, and which he leans upon in a combative way and full of a visionary zest of action, calling all stages of the world in order to enforce the Merzbühne. 10 MERZBÜHNE What Merzbühne demands is “the general equality of all materials, equality between perfect human, idiot, whistling wire gauze and idea pump”. The claim for equality of all materials culminates in the proposition that anything can be used for Merz. People even transform into Merz and begin to speak in reasonable sentences. While Schwitters sticks to more specific materials and describes how these become Merz or are merzed, he merges the standardization of interior design and the formation of time using a human being as material. He already anticipates a Merzgesamtkunstwerk (total synthesis of Merz art) that we cannot create, but which arises without the help of an author or individual. Merzgesamtkunstwerk is bigger than man, it affects the whole. Merzgesamtkunstwerk becomes a materialized idea, almost as if the material got out of control in all its dimensions and was formed by Merz. Schwitters started Merz in a very promising way. With Merz in his pocket, he discovers Anna 5 Die Zwiebel, ibid., pp. 26-276 Das Verwesungswesen, ibid., p. 27 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 28 9 Ibid., p. 28 10 “AN ALLE BÜHNEN DER WELT”, ibid., pp. 31-35
59 t t Blume and wants to love and unite Merz with Anna Blume. After the loss and reconstruction of his self and the mourning over the withered Anna Blume, he needs a new location for Merz: the stage. Thus, he can use acting in order to hide his loss and to stage himself as a big Zampano. He claims another, a new stage, as the conventional stages of the world are unsuitable for Schwitters: too small, too rigid. Schwitters claims a stage that allows for the Gesamtkunstwerk to be achieved. On and with Merzbühne, everything becomes material, even people and also Schwitters. The transition he has gone through with Anna Blume and his slaughter turned him to artistic material of Merz. With Anna Blume, Schwitters makes a poetically fictitious link, similar to many great thinkers, artists and poets who take compensation as a stimulus for their work, i.e. the compensation for the loss of a woman. They try to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, to launch an ultimate artistic gesture with the help of yearning as obsessive motor. MEASURING AND ADJUSTING Anna Blume Dichtungen (Anna Blume Poetries) contains the core idea and all essential elements of Merz. Schwitters discovers Merz in the Merzbild and, with Anna Blume, contributes to its expression and form. Anna Blume is a thought and an intellectual fact come to life, whose consequence and logic Schwitters now pursues. After this initial experience, Schwitters climbs Mount Ararat, the mountain situated in the east of Turkey where Noah’s Arch supposedly had stranded, with Merz and publishes a text holding six pages in Der Ararat – Glossen/Skizzen und Notizen zur Neuen Kunst (2 nd year, no. 1. 1921) (The Ararat – Commentaries/Sketches and Notes on New Art). In this text, he first explains thoroughly the meaning of academic art. 11 The very detailed paragraph, which gives a very exhaustive and pedagogical account of the process as well as optimization possibilities of painting after nature, ends with: “This is academy!” 12 He goes on to explain why this long and boring paragraph is necessary: “[…] to show that it is a labor of patience, that it can be learned, that it rests essentially on measurement and adjusting and provides no food for artistic creation.” 13 However, Schwitters also gains knowledge from the academic process, i.e. that measuring and adjusting visual objects with one another is the purpose of art. 14 Measuring and adjusting is a core element of the Merz idea. Schwitters often talks about playing off materials against each other. This reflection about the exact artistic process and about what art could be leads him to yet another realization: “Even striving for expression in a piece of art seems to be injurious for art. Art is a primordial concept, exalted like the godhead, inexplicable as life, indefinable and without purpose.” 15 The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz 11 Ibid., p. 3 12 Ibid., p. 4 13 Ibid., p. 4 14 Ibid., p. 4 15 Ibid., p. 5
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KURT SCHWIT TERS EXIBITION DESIGN B
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KURT SCHWIT TERS galerie gmurzynska
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“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
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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
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Page 45 and 46: 45! was exactly what he had done, i
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Page 49 and 50: 49 t Kurt Schwitters, Hanover 1927
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Page 63 and 64: t 63 t A radical act, whose radical
Page 65 and 66: tt65 The consequence of DADA: MERZ
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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.
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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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