Kurt Schwitters/MERZ updates, exhibitions and Merzbarn UK

I have always been influenced by the work of Schwitters, since my first few days at art school. In the UK his influence is everywhere, in fact it is hard to 'sweat it out' as Hoffman, once said about Cubism. In British art, it seems a default setting in fine art practice..this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but his influence runs deep. So I thought I'd put a post together of the diverse 'Schwitteresque' goings on out there.

It is the last few days of the 'Kurt Schwitters: Colour and Collage' exhibition at Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey. This is an excellent exhibitions of small scale collage works and a recreation of the Merzbau, see below, runs until 26th June.

Kurt Schwitters, 'The Cherry Picture' 1921, hear an excellent audio guide from MOMA here.

'From now through, 2011, the Princeton University Art Museum this is the first survey of this pioneering artist's work in the United States since his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1985. The exhibition will provide an unparalleled opportunity to view Schwitters's experiments in depth, including a full-scale reconstruction of his groundbreaking Merzbau, which has never before been seen in this region.'

Born in Hannover, Germany, Schwitters (1887-1948) is one of the most influential artists from the interwar avant-garde. During a period of social and economic turmoil, he developed a unique practice, one that merged art and life, embraced disparate media and utilized found objects and printed materials, most of them the discarded remnants of everyday life. 'Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage' was organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, see my earlier Schwitters post on this. It's about time, there was show like this in the UK.

A recording of Schwitters performing his phonetic poem (1922-32), will also be highlighted at the exhibition, Ursonate listen to a version by the artists himself here. 

 

There is a reconstruction of Schwitters's first Merzbau, destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943. In the UK,  there has been an extensive project to restore the Merzbarn, in  Elterwater, near Ambleside, in the Lake District. He was working on this before his death, see it here. Also there is Merzman, this an ongoing series of projects based in the UK that explores the infliuence of Schwitters, and is well worth looking at.

Kurt Schwitters, 'MZ 371' collage, 1922 (C) Menil Collection

Some background on Schwitters: In 1919, Schwitters named this body of work Merz-a neologism derived from the German kommerz (commerce)-which culminated in a series of collages, assemblages, experimental poems, prints and sculptures; the most famous being the Merzbau, a three-dimensional environment the artist began in the 1920s. Schwitters's work bridges some of the period's most important artistic movements, including Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism and Abstraction. Schwitters exerted a profound influence on artistic developments after World War II; Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, among others, considered him a source of inspiration, and contemporary installation art is inconceivable without the Merzbau. Schwitters was trained as a painter, and despite his experiments with other media, he never ceased painting. Indeed, painting informs almost all of his work, as witnessed by the passages of gouache, chalk, oils, paste and watercolor in his collages and assemblages-additions that transform the materials they cover. 

Merzbau Reconstruction, see Tate Research Papers here.

Otto Dix at the Institute of Foreign Affairs Gallery, Berlin

There is an interesting exhibition of the works of Otto Dix, the fascinating German artist who worked in both Expressionism and Dada at the Institute of Foreign Affairs Gallery in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition Otto Dix : Social Criticism Prints 1920-1924, 'Der Kreig (war) Etching Set 1924 runs until 7th August.

Otto Dix, etching, circa 1920

'With more than 600 drawings from the years 1914 to 1918 were done at various theatre's of war in Belgium, France and Russia, in the course of his military service. These protocols of war, created on the spot and of high artistic value, together with his own memories of the horrors of World War I, also formed the basis of a later grandiose serial work entitled "The War", published in 1924 by Karl Nierendorf in Berlin.

The cycle, consisting of fifty separate drawings and often compared to Goya's 'Desastres de la Guerra', (Disasters of War) does not only give an authentic and horrifying portrayal of the terrible trench fighting that took place in the great battles of this first world war-it also unmasks the 'moloch' of war for what it truly is. This series of etchings, which ranks particularly highly among the main works of Dix's oeuvre, forms the center of attention of this exhibition. 

Otto Dix, etching, c.1920

Dix never imagined that he could change people, i.e. humanity as such, by means of his works. But for these works, paintings and prints against war, he drew the rage and the hate, up to and including defamation, of the Nazi regime, which, after coming to power in 1933, removed him from his chair, as one of the first Academy professors to suffer this, and forbade him to exhibit.

The truth was important for Dix, also in his focus upon marginalized social groups of the postwar era, such as war veterans who had lost limbs, etc. and prostitutes; the collection included in this exhibition shows characteristic examples of such unfortunates. This inexorable drive to show the truth was already a source of agitation and protest among his contemporaries before the Nazis were in power. 

'I will either be famous or infamous', he once said as a young man. He has become both.'

Kurt Schwitter's: Still crazy after all these years...

It is remarkable to see how influential Kurt Schwitters remains in the 21st Century. There are a number of contemporary exhibitions on the work of one of the 20th Century's most remarkable artists. He has influenced British art, and especially abstraction, a great deal.

Kurt Schwitters, Untitled, (c) The Menil Collection, Houston, USA

Schwitters, who helped to define avant-garde art through his work with German Dada in Hanover, (after a falling out with the Berlin Dadaists), brought Dada practices to a wider audience through his 'merz' constructions of collage, photo-montage and found objects, such as tram tickets, newspaper adverts and fashion illustrations. Also he created three domensional constructions, his most famous being known as the 'Merzbau' or 'The Cathedral of Erotique Misery' (see below). He also developed innovative experimental typographic design through his 'Merz' publications with the Constructivist El Lizzitsky and Theo van Doesburg of De Stijl. 

Kurt Schwitters performing his 'Urlauten',/'Ursonate' c.1920's

The 'Ursonate', his phonetic sound poem from 1922–32 (a translation of the title is 'Primeval Sonata'), is still seen as an unusual and evocative performance piece, still performed around the world. Perhaps we have understood the influence of Schwitters more through the artists who have been influenced by him after WWII, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst, amongst many others.

Their are two shows/explorations currently exhibiting his work:

Exhibitioin in USA:

The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, (the great American collection of modern art), this exhibition explores Schwitters use of colour and light in his work on both paintings and collage. Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, is until 30th January 2011 and its emphasis is on the Merz works from the 1920s and 1940s. 

Kurt Schwitters, 'For Kate',1947

This is the first show of Schwitter's works since the 1985 exhibition at MOMA. The exhibition will travel the US to Princeton University Art Museum March 26–June 26, 2011, followed by Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive from August 3–November 27, 2011. 

Exhibition in the United Kingdom:
The other exhibition or perhaps exploration and celebration of his work is the British organisation that has been set up to archive and preserve his little known works in Britain, where he was eventually interned and died in Ambleside, Cumbria. One of his last Merzbau's is celebrated on the website: http://www.merzbarn.net. This construction made in a remote barn in the Langdale Valley and was created during his stay in the Lake District, yet financed by MOMA in New York, is now preserved at the Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle by the artist Richard Hamilton in 1965. You can see the documented reconstructions in 2007, of his Hanover Merzbau here from the Tate archive. This is a great organisation celebrating his art, preserving his legacy and raising funds for the upkeep of his last remaining Merbau. Schwitters died in 1948. Kurt Schwitters still crazy after all these years....

Kurt Schwitters,'The Cathedral of Erotique Misery', Hanover, Germany

Kurt Schwitters, 'Merzbarn', Cumbria UK