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

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power. “They started to put me back together. First with a delicate jolt my eyes were reinserted
in their sockets,” 13 Baeselstiel tells us. It is a parable for political reversal but also for the
reorganization of the self (as D. W. Winnicott uses the term) 14 in the artistic project of Kurt
Schwitters.
It was Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm magazine that published Schwitters’ Dada poem
An Anna Blume 15 in August 1919, making Schwitters famous overnight. The poem employs
multiple perspectives, fragments of found text, and absurd images to evoke the disarray of the
narrator’s emotional state but also his detachment in the throes of love. Like the objects in his
Merzbild compositions, Schwitters explained that: “In poetry, words and sentences are nothing
but parts… torn from their former context, dissociated and brought into a new artistic context,
they become formal parts of the poem, nothing more.” 16 For this, he may have found precedent
in Symbolist depaysment, the Futurist manifestos, and zaum, the transrational language of the
Russian avant-garde.
Juxtaposing word clusters as formal elements, Schwitters writes, in Die Zwiebel, for
example: “Anna Blume bathed in lilac blue roses shoots barbs blank abed in a Posturpedic
mattress. (Ripe for plucking, inwardly composed.) Partial explanation misses the point. Then
the butcher took a mighty leap backwards.” 17 The disjunctive scattering of images, actions, and
associations creates a sense of detached remove. He also
13
Kurt Schwitters, “The Onion (Merzpoem
8)”, translated by Peter Wortsman,
Cambridge Literary Review I/3, Easter,
Cambridge 2010, pp. 113.
14
See, for example, D. W. Winnicott,
Playing and Reality, Routledge, London
1971.
15
Kurt Schwitters, “An Anna Blume,”
1919, in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 1,
DuMont, Cologne 1973, pp. 58-63.
16
Kurt Schwitters, “Holland Dada,” 1923,
11; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 134; cited
in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The
Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, p. 43. See
also: Kurt Schwitters, “Konsequente
Dichtung (Consistent Poetry),” 1924,
p. 46; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 191; cited
in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The
Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, p. 130.
17
Kurt Schwitters, “Die Zwiebel,” 1919,
in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk,
ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 2, DuMont,
Cologne 1974, pp. 26-7; Kurt Schwitters,
“The Onion (Merzpoem 8)”, translated
by Peter Wortsman, Cambridge Literary
Review I/3, Easter, Cambridge 2010,
pp. 114.
18
Kurt Schwitters, “Katalog,” 1927, pp.
99-100; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, pp. 252-3;
cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters,
The Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, pp. 12-13.
achieves this in drawings with rubber stamps of words
like “Drucksache” (printed matter), “Die Redaktion” (the
editorial offices), and “Abteilung: Inserate” (Department:
small ads), evoking the world of business transactions
and bureaucratic offices, as does the word “Merz,” from
Kommerz und Privatbank. 18
Schwitters made collages from found typography, as
well, to create his effect. He constructed one example
from 1920, from some forty-five fragments of cut and torn
paper, juxtaposing three styles of calligraphy, each with
distinct associations – Gothic Germanic Frakturschrift;
modern sans-serif lettering, and the artist’s own illegible
handwriting. The appropriated words and phrases –
such as “Entlastungs” (exoneration), “Reichsgerichts-
Prozesse gegen den Staat” (legal proceedings against the
state), “Die Liste der Beschuldigungen findet” (the list of
accusations is found), and “Kriegsschauplatz” (theater of
war) – even seem to suggest a political theme, but he
deliberately avoided a statement or a coherent point of
view. Instead, these words record arbitrarily layered
impressions, spontaneous associations around a starting
point.
Schwitters composed abstract stage compositions
(Merzbühne) modeled on this structural principle too.
“In contrast to drama or opera, all parts of the Merzbühne