76 l SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden Jonathan Fineberg (<strong>2016</strong>) <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, L <strong>Merz</strong>bild L 3 (Das <strong>Merz</strong>bild), 1919 (Lost)
l In the political and social chaos of Germany after the Great War, in the bewildering onslaught of sensory input that had come to define modern life, under the psychic assaults of losing a first born child and a life-long burden of epilepsy, making art was a force against dissolution for the artist <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>. “In the war, things were in terrible turmoil,” <strong>Schwitters</strong> recalled. “What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready… Then suddenly the glorious revolution was upon us… I felt myself freed and had to shout my jubilation out to the world. Out of parsimony I took whatever I found to do this, because we were now an impoverished country. One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did, nailing and gluing it together… New things had to be made out of the fragments.” 1 The Armistice of November 11 th , 1918 ended World War One. The German military forced Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate and in January 1919 they held elections which brought the liberal Social Democrats to power. But it was an uneasy alliance of old and new, accompanied by ongoing riots, strikes, assassinations, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the hyperinflation which created economic havoc in Germany throughout the 1920s. Yet in 1918, the thirty-one year old <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong> lived with his well-to-do parents in the bourgeois and provincial city of Hanover, as he had all his life and would continue to do until driven out of the country by the fascists in 1936. He had married his cousin Helma Fischer in 1915, had a son who died only days after birth in September 1916, and two years later had a second son, Ernst, who remained close to his father throughout their lives. <strong>Schwitters</strong>’ friend Käte Steinitz described the odd atmosphere of Hanover at that time: “In fact, there was shooting in the streets of Hanover in those days. Revolutionists tore the golden epaulets from the uniforms of high officers. But legend has it that through it all the revolutionists scrupulously observed the civic regulation: ‘Keep off the grass.’ There was a little bloodshed, to be sure. A workman’s and soldiers government was established, but the lawns, border, and flower beds remained intact.” 2 Steinitz’s warm recollections of <strong>Schwitters</strong> also portray his affability and his eccentricity. “One day I saw <strong>Kurt</strong>’s bicycle leaning up against the wall of a house in an old part of Hanover… It was then the best guinea-pig shop in town… I entered the shop because I saw <strong>Kurt</strong> bent over the counter. He was negotiating a sale to the shopkeeper of one, two, three, four, five guinea pigs, which he pulled one by one out of his coat pockets. ‘Helma says we have enough guinea pigs at home,’ he explained to me, ‘and besides Ernst needs Greek and Roman lead soldiers to play with.’” 3 He took the proceeds down the street to the toy shop. <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong> launched his artistic career in 1918- 19, pioneering the assemblage of all manner of nonartistic refuse, mostly gathered from the streets, with expressionistically handled passages of painting. In the same way, he composed stories, plays, and poetry in disjointed collages of words and fragmentary phrases and even performed abstract vocal works like his 1919 Sonate in Urlauten (Sonata in Primal Sounds). “New art forms out of the remains of a former culture,” 4 he said. “I called my new manner of working from the principle of using any material MERZ. That is the second syllable of Kommerz 1 <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, “<strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>,” 1930, in <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, Das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 335; cited in Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>: Tradition and Innovation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, pp. 6-7. 2 Käte Trauman Steinitz, <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>: A Portrait from Life, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968, p. 25. 3 Ibid., 26. 4 <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, “Daten aus meinem Leben,” 1926 in <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, Das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 241; cited in John Elderfield, <strong>Kurt</strong> <strong>Schwitters</strong>, The Museum of Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York 1985, p. 12. 77 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg
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“In part spurred by Rauschenberg
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collectors and leading institutions
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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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“Imitation remains imitation. Imi
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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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