Part One - The Question of Kurt
Critics and artists have hailed Kurt Schwitters as a "Master of collage", yet the concept of a master in the Dadaist period would have been laughable, especially when the term is attached to an arguably Dadaist artist.
Dada dictated a form of equality in art. The new wave of modern art inspired by Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" suggested the idea that anyone could be an artist, a move away from a dominant personality "controlling" the work of art and onto a more democratic, random-chance art whereby objects, often mundane everyday items, were elevated to artistic status.
So Schwitters' collages pay tribute to this concept; tram tickets, pieces of scrap paper, pieces of wood and even used candles attained a second, "more honourable" life in Schwitters work, giving these works an almost accidental, nailed together yet dreamlike and powerful feel.
Perhaps collage is a misappropriate term for Schwitters' work, as much of it could indeed be considered assemblage and some of the more three dimensional examples could be termed as constructivist. But it is a certainty that Schwitters moved collage on, incorporating aspects of Duchamp's readymades and also the photomontages of Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch, although with much less of a theme of social commentary or critique.
Schwitters' relationship with the Dada movement is clouded in much confusion. On the one hand he was, by default, Dadaist due to his artistic ideology, challenging accepted traditions and methods, but on the other hand, the most fundamental concept of Dadaist activity; anti-art, is opposed to Schwitters' attitude:
"Schwitters was absolutely, unreservedly, 24 hours-a-day PRO-Art. His genius had no time for transforming the world... There was no talk of the "death of art" or "non-art" or "anti-art" with him. On the contrary, every tram ticket, every envelope, cheese wrapper or cigar band, together with old shoes or laces, wire, feathers, dishcloths - everything that had been thrown away - all this he loved and restored to an honoured place in life through his art."
-Hans Richter
Part Two - The Early Life of Kurt
One very obvious bone of contention with the Dadaists, particularly with Berlin Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck, was Schwitters' unashamedly bourgeoise background. Kurt Schwitters' father was s successful boutique owner in Hanover, but despite this financial affluence, Kurt's father was extremely conservative with his wealth, something reflected perhaps in Schwitters' pride in never spending a pfennig on new clothes for his wife. His home life, from the eyes of Huelsenbeck, demonstrates the chasm that separated their ideologies on artistic life:
"When I came to Hanover ... I visited the Schwitters in his house in the Waldhauserstrasse. It was shortly before Christmas, and the tree was already standing decorated in the living room. Frau Schwitters was bathing her son in a huge old-fashioned bathtub. We, who believed the military barracks or the empty room to be the most suitable place of residence, could not stop laughing at Schwitters." - Huelsenbeck.
At the age of twenty-two, Schwitters enrolled as a student at the Dresden Academy of Art. During this period of academic work, the general picture which has been painted of Schwitters is of an uninspiring, unadventurous yet dedicated Naturalist painter, demonstrating a considerable work ethic, a consistent element of his artistic life. Schwitters' first brush with avant-garde art came with a dissertation on abstract art which is now lost, but it would not be until 1917, three years after the completion of his time at Dresden, that he would begin working with abstract art.
Schwitters, after completion of his time at Dresden, began working with Impressionism, then most notably working with Expressionists in Hanover. This gradual shift in his artistic work towards a more avant-garde approach seems to have been borne from a growing confidence
in the development of his style.
Part Three - Kurt, Dada and the Commerzbank
The traditional story about Kurt Schwitters' first encounter with the Berlin Dadaists is that Richard Huelsenbeck rejected his application to join them because he objected to his lifestyle and in particular "his bourgeoise face". Following this rejection, Schwitters quickly established his own version of Dada, which he called "Merz", a name taken at random from the word "Commerzbank". In truth, the birth of Merz came about with the first collage/assemblage works he created under the guidance of Hans Arp. Schwitters' own work "Hansi" bears a resemblance to Arp's wood constructs. Schwitters began work on Merz collages around 2 to 3 years prior to any meaningful contact with Berlin Dada.
"Even as an anti-artist, Arp remained Apollonian. In Schwitters, Apollo and Dionysus always went hand in hand - and occasionally stood on their heads." - Hans Richter.
Dada and Merz shared some elements in the work and ideas behind that work, for example the challenging and anarchic style and the desire to push back and explore artistic boundaries. However, Dada and Merz differed on one fundamental, critical issue; the Dadaists, in particular Tristan Tzara, were vociferously anti-art and pro-death, whereas Schwitters was most adamantly pro-art and his aforementioned work ethic conveys an inherent optimism and pro-life approach to Art.
Another stylistic similarity between Merz and Dada art is the borrowing of a dramatic and bold typography from the Futurists in the manifestos and periodicals they published. A further difference, more personally between Huelsenbeck and Schwitters was that Huelsenbeck saw Dada as a political tool, even a weapon, whereas Schwitters had little time or interest for politics.
Despite the rejection by Huelsenbeck which must have disappointed Schwitters, and his dedication to Merz, he remained an active campaigner for the Dadaist cause. In 1923, Schwitters embarked on the Dada Holland campaign with Theo and Nelly van Doesburg, and it is well documented that wherever he went, he would leave stickers proclaiming "Join DADA!". So it seems that even though Dada's basic philosophy was at odds with his own, he believed in Dada's ability to evolve and change art for the better, plus many of the Dadaists were good friends of Schwitters.
Part Four - Kurt and Collage
Collage has its roots in the folk art of 12th Century China and African tribal emblems. But it is not until the Picasso and Braque Cubist experiments with pasted paper and assemblage that there is strong evidence of collage's emergence as a potent fine art form in its own right. However it must be stressed that this use of pasted paper is only a part of a multi-media approach to Cubism and not technically collage art in its entirety.
Collage effectively became a catalyst for the discovery of a totally new approach to Cubist art, a more abstract form of Cubism, simplifying the process to create shapes which hinted at the real life object it was representing, for example, a piece of brown paper or area of brown paint can become a violin if one of its edges are suitably contoured, or even if the outline of a violin is drawn over it. The process of representation to abstraction had been reversed so that the artists were working from the abstract to the representative, ie; the shift from analytical cubism to the synthetic phase of cubism.
It is from the cubist experimentation with collage, that theories can be developed as to the nature of collage, and its role as a fine art form. The most prominent of these theories is the relationship between collage and representation of reality. At the beginning of the twentieth century, three main concepts of reality were addressed by scientists and theoreticians such as Bergson, Freud and Einstein, generating new ways of thinking about the human condition, the nature of existence, space, time and the sub-conscious mind, on the whole a new perception of reality developed.
The main themes of this new world view were disintegration, fragmentation an dislocation, collage was clearly the perfect medium with which to express elements of the new "modern" mindset, with its nature as a unification of many elements, all reacting with each other to create a "whole" that is never fully realised, that is to say dislocated and fragmented, yet unified. So it follows that the idea of a fully resolved reality is as possible as a fully resolved collage.
"Reality cannot be truthfully represented as it is already a kind
of representation"
"Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible."
- Jean Baudrillard, 1984
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