Editing Kurt Schwitters (section)

=== Dada and Merz ===
[[File:An Anna Blume.jpg|thumb|Cover of ''[[An Anna Blume|Anna Blume]], Dichtungen'', 1919]]
Schwitters asked to join Berlin Dada either in late 1918 or early 1919, according to the memoirs of Raoul Hausmann.<ref>Raoul Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, 3rd edition, ed. Karl Riha and Günter Kämpf (Giessen, 1992), p. 63.</ref> Hausmann claimed that [[Richard Huelsenbeck]] rejected the application because of Schwitters's links to Der Sturm and to Expressionism in general, which were seen by the Dadaists as hopelessly romantic and obsessed with [[aesthetics]].<ref>[http://hdl.handle.net/10919/26502] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080529024356/http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03252008-191510/unrestricted/05_CHAPTER_THREE.pdf|date=29 May 2008}} note 23</ref> Ridiculed by Huelsenbeck as 'the [[Caspar David Friedrich]] of the Dadaist Revolution',<ref>quoted in ''The Grove Dictionary of Art'', Oxford University Press, 1996, Essay on Kurt Schwittters by Richard Humphreys</ref> he would reply with an absurdist short story, "Franz Mullers Drahtfrühling, Ersters Kapitel: Ursachen und Beginn der grossen glorreichen Revolution in Revon", published in the magazine ''[[Der Sturm]]'' (xiii/11, 1922), which featured an innocent bystander who started a revolution "merely by being there".<ref>{{cite web |title=The Collection &#124; Kurt Schwitters. (German, 1887–1948) |url=http://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?artist_id=5293 |publisher=MoMA |access-date=17 February 2012 |archive-date=13 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191213120302/http://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?artist_id=5293 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Hausmann's anecdote about Schwitters asking to join Berlin Dada is, however, somewhat dubious, for there is well-documented evidence that Schwitters and Huelsenbeck were on amicable terms at first.<ref>Ralf Burmeister, 'Related Opposites. Differences in Mentality between Dada and Merz', in ''Kurt Schwitters: Merz – a Total Vision of the World'', exhibition catalogue, Museum Tinguely, Basel 2004, 140–49.</ref> When they first met in 1919, Huelsenbeck was enthusiastic about Schwitters's work and promised his assistance, while Schwitters reciprocated by finding an outlet for Huelsenbeck's Dada publications. When Huelsenbeck visited him at the end of the year, Schwitters gave him a lithograph (which he kept all his life)<ref>Karin Orchard & Isabel Schulz (ed.) ''Kurt Schwitters Catalogue Raisonné 1905–22'', Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2000, no. 575</ref> and though their friendship was by now strained, Huelsenbeck wrote him a conciliatory note. "You know I am well-disposed towards you. I think too that certain disagreements we have both noticed in our respective opinions should not be an impediment to our attack on the common enemy, the bourgeoisie and philistinism."<ref>Ralf Burmeister, 'Related Opposites. Differences in Mentality between Dada and Merz', in Kurt Schwitters: Merz – a Total Vision of the World, exhibition catalogue, Museum Tinguely, Basel 2004, p. 144.</ref> It was not until mid-1920 that the two men fell out, either because of the success of Schwitters's poem ''[[An Anna Blume]]'' (which Huelsenbeck considered unDadaistic) or because of quarrels about Schwitters's contribution to Dadaco, a projected Dada atlas edited by Huelsenbeck. It is unlikely that Schwitters ever considered joining Berlin Dada, however, for he was under contract to [[Der Sturm]], which offered far better long-term opportunities than Dada's quarrelsome and erratic venture. If Schwitters contacted Dadaists at this time, it was generally because he was searching for opportunities to exhibit his work.

Though not a direct participant in [[Dada#Berlin|Berlin Dada]]'s activities, Schwitters employed Dadaist ideas in his work, used the word itself on the cover of ''[[An Anna Blume]]'', and would later give Dada recitals throughout Europe on the subject with [[Theo van Doesburg]], [[Tristan Tzara]], Jean Arp, and Raoul Hausmann. In many ways his work was more in tune with [[Dada#Zürich|Zürich Dada's]] championing of [[Performance art|performance]] and [[abstract art]] than Berlin Dada's agit-prop approach, and indeed examples of his work were published in the last Zürich Dada publication, ''Der Zeltweg'',<ref>Dada, Leah Dickerman, National Gallery of Art Washington, p. 167</ref> November 1919, alongside the work of Arp and [[Sophie Taeuber]]. Whilst his work was far less political than key figures in Berlin Dada, such as [[George Grosz]] and [[John Heartfield]], he would remain close friends with various members, including [[Hannah Höch]] and Raoul Hausmann, for the rest of his career.

In 1922 [[Theo van Doesburg]] organised a series of Dada performances in the [[Netherlands]]. Various members of Dada were invited to join, but declined. Eventually the programme comprised acts and performances by Theo van Doesburg, [[Nelly van Doesburg]] as Petrò Van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, and sometimes [[Vilmos Huszàr]]. The Dada performances took place in various cities, amongst which [[Amsterdam]], [[Leiden]], [[Utrecht]], and [[The Hague]]. Schwitters also performed on solo evenings, one of which took place on 13 April 1923 in [[Drachten]], [[Friesland]]. Schwitters later on visited Drachten quite frequently, staying with a local painter, {{ill|Thijs Rinsema|nl}}. Schwitters created several collages there, probably together with Thijs Rinsema. Their collages can sometimes hardly be distinguished from each other. From 1921 onwards there are signs of correspondence between Schwitters and an intarsia worker. From this co-operation several new works originated, where the collage technique was applied to woodwork, by incorporating several kinds of wood as a means to delineate images and letters. Thijs Rinsema also used this technique.<ref>Thijs/Evert Rinsema: Eigenzinnig en Veelzijdig, Thijs Rinsema, Drachten, 2011</ref>

[[Merz (art style)|Merz]] has been called 'Psychological [[Collage]]'. Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events. (''Merzpicture 29a, Picture with Turning Wheel'', 1920<ref>In the Beginning Was Merz, Mayer-Buser, Orchard, Hatje Cantz, p. 55</ref> for instance, combines a series of wheels that only turn clockwise, alluding to the general drift Rightwards across Germany after the [[Spartacist Uprising]] in January that year, whilst ''Mai 191(9)'',<ref>The Collages of Kurt Schwitters, Dietrich, Cambridge, 1993, p. 111</ref> alludes to the strikes organized by the Bavarian Workers' and Soldiers' Council.) Autobiographical elements also abound; test prints of graphic designs; bus tickets; ephemera given by friends. Later collages would feature proto-pop mass media images. (''En Morn'', 1947, for instance, has a print of a blonde young girl included, prefiguring the early work of [[Eduardo Paolozzi]],<ref>In The Beginning Was Merz, Meyer-Buser, Orchard, Hatje Cantz, p. 186</ref> whilst many works seem to have directly influenced [[Robert Rauschenberg]], who said after seeing an exhibition of Schwitters's work at the [[Sidney Janis Gallery]], 1959, that "I felt like he made it all just for me.")<ref>Quoted in Rauschenberg/Art and Life, Mary Lynn Kotz, Harry N Abrams, p. 91</ref>

Whilst these works were usually collages incorporating found objects, such as bus tickets, old wire. and fragments of newsprint, Merz also included artists' [[periodicals]], sculptures, [[Sound poetry|sound poems]], and what would later be called "[[installation art|installations]]". Schwitters was to use the term [[Merz (art style)|Merz]] for the rest of the decade, but, as Isabel Schulz has noted, 'though the fundamental compositional principles of Merz remained the basis and centre of [Schwitters's] creative work [...] the term Merz disappears almost entirely from the titles of his work after 1931'.<ref>Isabel Schulz, 'What Would Life be Without Merz? On the Evolution and Meaning of Kurt Schwitters' Concept of Art', in the Beginning was Merz – From Kurt Schwitters to the Present Day, exhibition catalogue, Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2000. p. 249.</ref>