68 <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong> (ed.), <strong>Merz</strong> 4. Banalitäten, <strong>Merz</strong>verlag, Hanover 1923 t
t 69 t Modern Age), succeeding the classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Biedermeier period. 40 Thus he comes to the conclusion that Dada is the style of our time, which is in fact lacking style. 41 In other words: Dada is just as nonsensical as the times we live in are insane. In the Netherlands, <strong>Schwitters</strong> and the Doesburgs went through a shock therapy, since they held a mirror up to the time that is Dada, as if they wanted to fight fire with fire, in order to achieve a style 42 ; they did it out of love for the style. 43 The audience they encountered in the Netherlands offered resistance against their actions and events. There was a dissonance between the Dada they presented to the audience and the Dada the public embraced and called for. The audience saw Dada as shenanigans, as something absurdly funny, while they were fighting for the style on the stage and took Dada seriously. They committed to the serious mission of making the world a better place with Dada and introducing style into the times they lived in. Enthusiastic but ignorant, the audience’s resistance was encouragement to continue Dada’s advancement and to throw it into their faces. It is comforting to know that even back then, they had to struggle with that dilemma and be faced, as it happens in all times, with a seemingly sophisticated civilized man who recognizes how stupid he can be, and how stupid he is at the bottom of his soul. For <strong>Schwitters</strong>, the stupidity displayed by the audience was an enormous success, as for once, the civilized man might realize that his grand culture wasn’t as grand as it looked. 44 To come to this conclusion, the audience first needs the ability to develop self-awareness. DELIBERATE NON-ART In <strong>Merz</strong> 4, <strong>Schwitters</strong> publishes four texts entitled Banalitäten (banalities). In the first two texts, he points out banalities by quoting different Dadaists and writers, among them Goethe and Schiller. In Banalitäten 3 and Banalitäten 4, he still reflects the Dada Holland tour, though it is already July 1923. He acknowledges that the activities on the tour were not always of an artistic nature, for example when they excited and inspired the audience in such a way so that it would succumb to the transformed Dadaism and calm down again. Their actions were not artistic, but Dadaistic. In <strong>Merz</strong> 2, Dadaism was defined as a life movement, Dada as the face of the time they lived in and the Dadaist as a mirror carrier. 45 The Banalitäten in <strong>Merz</strong> 4 continued this train of thought and put Dada in proximity of ordinariness. For banality is the detecting of an inartistic complex in an inartistic world. Banality is the creation of a Dada work out of the The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz 40 Ibid., p. 5 41 “dada complet”, ibid., p. 5 42 Ibid., p. 7 43 Ibid., p. 7 44 Ibid., p. 7 45 “Banalitäten 3”, in MERZ 4: Banalitäten, no. 4, p. 40
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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
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SUMMARY 10 MERZ (Extract from “AR
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One could make up a catechism of me
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Merz House was my first piece of Me
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15 Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 2. N
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collectors and leading institutions
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as important as Marcel Duchamp. DH:
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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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several weeks later becomes dictato
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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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