Merz
Merz is the name Kurt Schwitters gave to his art in 1919, after a fragment of the words 'Commerz und Privatbank' cut into his collage Das Merzbild. Germany's collapse at the end of the First World War set the terms: 'Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz.' From bus tickets, newsprint, wire, wood and printed ephemera he built carefully balanced collages - 'psychological collage' - that make coherent aesthetic sense of the world's debris while dropping witty hints at current events. Merz grew beyond the picture plane into artists' periodicals (the journal Merz, 1923-1932), typography, sound poetry such as the Ursonate, and walk-in constructions like the Merzbau in Hanover. Though spurned by Berlin Dada, it anticipated Pop art, happenings and Fluxus.
Defining characteristics
- Assemblage of everyday ephemera: bus tickets, newsprint, labels, wire, wood scraps
- Carefully balanced, coherent surfaces - order wrested from refuse
- Found typography and printed fragments used as color and structure
- Witty allusions to current events embedded in abstract compositions
- Collage pushed into three dimensions and whole rooms (Merzbau)
- Cross-media practice: picture, magazine, sound poem, typographic experiment
Key figures
- Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) — Hanover artist who coined Merz and made its collages, journals, sound poems and Merzbau
- Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) — De Stijl founder who toured Dada performances with Schwitters and co-made the Merz typographic story The Scarecrow (1925)
- El Lissitzky (1890-1941) — Constructivist whose design shaped the Merz journal issue 8/9 (1924), which he edited and typeset
Example works
- Das Undbild — Kurt Schwitters (1919)
- Merz Picture 29a (Picture with Turning Wheel) — Kurt Schwitters (1920)
- Merzbau — Kurt Schwitters (1923-1937)
Sources
- Merz - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Kurt Schwitters - Wikipedia encyclopedia