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

t
70
inartistic complex through limitation. In this definition, banality resembles the i work of art.
The crucial difference is, however, that banality is “deliberate non-art”, while i is deliberate art.
It is not the i principle the Dadaists commit to, but banality. 46
Banalitäten 3 is contrasted with a dada complet 1, expressing the i aspect that in banalities,
art is involved in a complementary way. Again, these Dada banalities cannot be detected or
created by just anyone either. Only the most skilled artist is able to create Dada, because only
he can assess what art is. In other words, in order to make deliberate non-art, one has to know
what art is. Just as Merz is complementary to Dada, i is complementary to banalities. 47
This realization leads Schwitters to a conclusive relationship between Dada and Merz:
“While Dadaism only points to opposites, Merz resolves them by giving them values within a
work of art. Pure Merz is pure art, pure Dadaism is non-art; in both cases deliberately so.” 48
EASING OF THE TIME
Merz and the so-called Urdada, primeval Dada, which Schwitters calls Dadaism, are
complementary and consequently linked with each other. They contrast with a Dada that
the dumb audience can embrace and create. This incomplete Dada destroys the artistic form
through random succession, meaning that there are only a few truly capable artists who may
create Dadaistic works in a consequent manner. 49 The core Dadaists can be included among
those, while the Huelsendadas belong rather to the category of the dumb masses.
Schwitters’ understanding of Dada grows more and more ambivalent. The categorization
of core Dada and Huelsendada is a provisional periphrasis. Whenever he considers something
as Dada, Schwitters counts himself among the core Dadas. It becomes Dada through him. Just
as an object of nature becomes art, following the i principle. This transformation is Dada, or i,
which leads Schwitters to the conclusion: i = dada. If i = dada, then Dada, core Dada that is, is a
décadence of Merz as well. In this process of the core Dadaists, Schwitters considers a valuable
method of distinction which goes as follows: Dadaists create Dada, which reminds us that the
world is Dada. The world is dadaistically dumb, but has the potential to become art with i and
Dada. When Schwitters says that we live in an ‘i-dada-age’, which the Dadaists, through internal
determination, have transformed into a Dada age, he means that Dada allows for the possibility
of changing the world with art. Dada aims at the easing of time, abandoning its status quo and
rigidity, and remodeling it into a Merzgesamtkunstwerk. 50
46
Ibid., p. 41
47
“dada complet 1”, ibid., p. 41
48
“Banalitäten 3”, ibid., p. 40
49
“dada complet 1”, ibid., p. 41
50
Ibid., p. 43