7/27/2019 69838499

1/9

The Ruin and the Ruined in the

Work of Kurt Schwitters

Gemma Carroll

The Merzbau, which Kurt Schwitters described as his life work, wasdestroyed in an Allied bombing raid during the Second World War. Theenvironmental structure created in the artists home evolved from earlierassemblages and collages made from rubbish and developed through aprocess of accumulation over a period of sixteen years, roughly from1921 until 1937. Working through a bizarre form of overpainting, itboth hid and emphasised what lay beneath as grottos were simultaneouslyadvanced and withdrawn, both hiding and enshrining the detritus of themodern world from which the Merzbau had evolved. While plans anddocuments suggest that the Merzbau extended through eight rooms ofSchwitters home, only the main room or Merzbau proper was photo-graphed in 1933 by Wilhelm Redemann. These photographs initially

seem to present a constructivist geometric shell. The grottos, however,still act as vitrines of the Merzbaus origins; the discarded materials itwas made of are still evident in the reconstruction created by PeterBissegger between 1981 and 1983. These were the only parts that couldnot be re-created (instead enlargements of the areas in the photographsshowing the grottos were inserted under sheets of glass).

The Merzbau was an assemblage which Schwitters repeatedly statedremained unfinished on principle and could, theoretically, be continuedad infinitum.1 In light of the ideas of formation that underpinned boththe material processes of Schwitters collages and his philosophy on art,the art historian Ernst Nu ndel wrote:

The Merzbau, destroyed in 1943, continues growing, in the memory ofthose who saw it. . . in the speculations of art historians. To each hisown concept of the Merzbau. In this state it approaches the idea ofMerz, the idea of continuous recasting, of an artistic process withoutbounds, without beginning and without end.2

The ruin in Schwitters work can thus be conceived not as an obstacle toits understanding, but instead as providing more material in the assem-blage that was Schwitters self-invented philosophy of Merz. However,

Third Text, Vol. 25, Issue 6, November, 2011, 715723

Third TextISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online # Third Text (2011)http://www.tandfonline.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2011.624346

1. Kurt Schwitters, Ich undmeine Ziele (Myself andmy Aims), Merz 21,Hanover, 1931, p 115

2. Ernst Nu ndel, KurtSchwitters: MitSelbstzeugnissen undBilddokumenten, Rowohlt,Hamburg, 1981, p 16

7/27/2019 69838499

2/9

it is not the destruction of the Merzbau that I will examine here: this hasalready been examined by other scholars. Instead I wish to explore pre-cisely how Schwitters literally used the ruin and the ruined fragmentsof the immediate past, trash, as his material of choice. Karl Marx hadalready written that economic value does not inhere in the materialityof the object but emerges from the social relations and organisation oflabour which produces it, and that the separation between consumermarket and the sphere of culture had become indiscernible. What arethe ramifications of these ideas in Schwitters works, structures articu-lated through the waste products of mass production? And to complicatematters further, what are the implications when Kurt Schwitters, as a

Merz Building(detail: stairway entrance, side), 1933, room installation, colour, paper, cardboard, plaster, glass, mirror, metal, wood, electriclighting, various materials, 393 580 460 cm, destroyed (1943), photo: Kurt Schwitters Archives at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, photo-

grapher: Wilhelm Redemann, Hannover, repro: Michael Herling/Aline Gwose, Sprengel Museum Hannover#DACS, London

716

7/27/2019 69838499

3/9

commercial designer with his own successful advertising agency, alsocreated such ephemera?

Through an exploration of Schwitters commercial and non-commercial works, I wish to explore the connections between com-merce, communication and the ruin and ruined that characterised newforms of media and information technology in the Weimar Republic.

Schwitters literally scoured the streets of his home city Hanoverlooking for materials: branding, packaging, ticket stubs, newspapers,illustrated magazines, advertisements, flyers, and so on. Scholars havealready examined how artists of the avant-garde used, understood andsatirised techniques of the mass media. However, I propose toexamine how Schwitters engaged in a more ambitious project: anexploration of the fundamentally new systems of information technol-ogy, of the ways in which information was communicated, controlled,preserved and, not least, discarded. The singular term medium, denot-ing an intervening agency, means, or instrument, was first applied tonewspapers in the nineteenth century. However, it was not until the1920s that the media began to appear as a singular collective noun,

reflecting the fact that mediation was now multiple.3 I will argue thatSchwitters work, neither directly politically engaged nor, arguably, for-mally innovative, represents a sustained exploration of this first mediaage and its completely new forms of mediation. He looks deeply intoboth the before and the after of the ephemera of our society, producingadverts, branding and packaging as a graphic designer and reassertingthe same objects as trash, rubbish and the ruined in his collages andassemblages.

Examining the links between Schwitters collages and advertisementsand exploring the inherent perceptual and temporal changes correspond-ing to new systems of information organisation, preservation and discard-

ing, I wish to pursue an argument that the use of the ruined in Schwitterswork presents a much deeper engagement with endemic problems of com-munication and meaning in Weimar Germany than has hitherto beenacknowledged. Schwitters, like many other artists working in theperiod, was both conscripted in the First World War and trained in com-mercial design. His experience of wartime service was not on the battle-field; because of his epilepsy he was posted as a draftsman in an ironworksand attributes his conversion to modern art to his experience of industry.Schwitters modernity was not only an industrial but also a commercialone: he went on to found his own Merz advertising agency in 1927. Aprocess of simultaneity and fragmentation was presented by advertsand posters on the modern street, a series of incongruous juxtapositions

echoed in the materiality of collage which is literally built from theencounters of foreign objects. The Great War for the first time requiredthe mobilisation not just of armies but of whole populations. Theability of the mass media, in effect, to create values and beliefs wasbrought to the fore in the First World War: it was not just the firstmechanised war but the first media war. Propaganda was used tosecure the home front and also dropped into enemy lands. Concurrentwith the first mechanised and media war came the arrival of masswaste; and the turnover of ephemera from production line to rubbishheap was unprecedented as information became the most importantweapon in the new arsenal.

717

3. Oxford English Dictionary,http://www.oed.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/search?searchType=dictionary&q=media (onlyaccessible to UCLaffiliates), accessed 27February 2011

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/

7/27/2019 69838499

4/9

Reconstruction of the Merz Buildingby Kurt Schwitters in the state of 1933 by Peter Bissegger, 19811983,colour on wood, plaster, polyester, photographs and glass, 393 580 460 cm, Sprengel Museum Hannover,

photo: Kurt Schwitters Archiv at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, photographer: Michael Herling/Aline GwoseSprengel Museum Hannover,# Peter Bissegger

718

7/27/2019 69838499

5/9

In Modern Advertising Schwitters succinctly states: Our times areessentially different from earlier periods because of the enormous increasein communications and the improvement of the means of communicationand technological methods.4 Such ideas are thoroughly familiar to thoseversed in media theory and, in particular, Friedrich Kittlers theorisationof the shift from writing to data streams, from matter to information.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century with the ability to store infor-mation in electrical signals, and continuing in the technological advancesthroughout the twentieth century (for example radio and film), sight,sound and language no longer needed to be translated into writing,which had traditionally served as the main reproducible intermediatefor all experience. Instead experiences were transposed for preservationand communication through mechanical means an epoch of change inapprehending the world that created a contemporary media sensibility.Kittlers triumvirate of storage and preservation devices typewriter,gramophone and film camera divided hands from paper, ears fromeyes, and bodies from the natural flow of time. However, Kittleris clear to qualify that this process does not take place only with the

invention of new technology: Operating at their limits, even antiquatedmedia become sensitive enough to register the signs and indices of asituation.5 Using the same line of thinking, Matthew S Witkovskyexplores the Dadaists use of the postal system in his essay Pen Pals,and I propose that the impact of radio and cinema, as well as othernew technologies, had such a fundamental impact that the conventionalmedium of paper was itself radically changed.6 It came to represent asite between matter and information. Unlike radio and cinema,however, paper leaves a material trail, quickly transforming from news-paper pages to debris.

Schwitters collages would suggest that the evolution of communi-

cation technology and methods is not always an improvement. The useof rubbish as his material of choice upsets presupposed meaning, andthe medium of collage enacts an uncontrollable domino of shifting con-nections and links. The technology by which the mass media was dissemi-nated existed before the First World War; however, the development ofits implementation for the needs of a mass war accelerated changes andfundamentally transformed this system. Ironically, while the FirstWorld War was responsible for dramatically accelerating systems ofinformation transmission, it was also characterised by as many communi-cations problems as solutions. Generals struggled to find ways to commu-nicate with the front line while globally telegraphs were misdirected,cables severed and signals blocked. This suggests that there is something

lost in these systems; they accelerate communication but do not necess-arily make it better. Instead of seeing art as merely adapting to techno-logical development, we see that these changes were full of gaps, errors,failures and unexpected results where encounters developed that raisedquestions never really explored or sufficiently answered. This space wasone important and underexplored site in which the avant-garde operated.Meaning, communication and understanding are fundamentally factorsin the creation of the German interwar avant-garde.

As we know Dada was essentially a response to the belief that rationalthinking and logic had culminated in the First World War and its ideas ofanti-art, nonsense and irony were radically employed to undercut presup-

719

4. Kurt Schwitters, ModernAdvertising (1928),Design Issues, vol 9, no 2,p 69

5. Friedrich A Kittler,Literature, Media,Information System:Essays, John Johnston, ed,Gordon & Breach,Amsterdam, 1997, p 29

6. Matthew S Witkovsky, PenPals, in Witkovsky andLeah Dickerman, eds, TheDada Seminars, Thamesand Hudson, DistributedArt Publishers, London andWashington, 2005

7/27/2019 69838499

6/9

posed meanings in society. While Schwitters defined himself by hisown moniker of Merz he was strongly affiliated with Dada, and theexploration of presupposed meaning and communication is also essentialto his work. It could be argued that the German avant-garde was workingout of the ruins of traditional meaning and understanding, and in thewake of the collective trauma inflicted by mass warfare, commerce and

communication came to the fore, bypassing the success they hadalready achieved prior to the war, as every surface became a potential bill-board and advertisement monuments lined the newly built highways. Theruined in Schwitters work is not conceived in negative terms but as a pro-ductive locus; nevertheless, Schwitters explored the new media fromboth sides, from the proud production of new material to the stage of con-sumption and the reuse of rubbish.

That said, an understanding of formation, organisation and assembly,in the process of simultaneity and fragmentation inherent to the collagemedium, was put to very different effects by adverts and posters on themodern street and in magazines. Schwitters founded and was chair ofthe Ring of New Advertising Designers which included the renowned

typographer Jan Tschichold. In Modern Advertising Schwitters dividesthe art of advertising into three main qualities. First, commerce: Thetempo of commerce requires clarity and the rapid legibility of the textemployed.7 Second, quality: The design capacity really creates thequality itself. . . The excellence of the advertising is the visible signs ofthe quality of goods being touted; in that lies its meaning.8 Third, stan-dardisation and normalisation.9 Initially, these qualities may seem theabsolute opposite of his collage strategies, but elaborating on theseideas in Designed Typography Schwitters writes:

The phrase typographical arrangement is very plausible in contrast to theconcept of typographic design. Then one clearly sees the fundamental

difference; what is meant by arrangement is the accustomed intelligibleimposition of order characteristic of the advertising expert, which annihil-ates the typographical order that he intends to produce. Of course, givingan intelligible pattern to the parts of an advertising project is considerednecessary; yet, as a goal it is absurd because it is unimportant in termsof effect on the observer and it falls short of its target because, in thefinal analysis, all human beings perceive things with their senses and notwith their intellect. . . They are particularly wrong when they assumethat others would privilege thought over sight.10

Summarising these ideas in one line Schwitters writes: Not the what butthe how constitutes what we see and hear.11 Taking Schwitters DasUndbild and his typographical design for the province of Karlsruhe as

examples, we can see how Schwitters explores how, not necessarilywhat, we see but from the other pole of the production/consumption(and discarding) axis. Schwitters Das Undbilduses the conjunction und(and) to create verbal and visual links between an odd assortment offound objects and bits of text. A fragment itself, it functions as the integralelement within a work composed of fragments and invites the viewer play-fully to construct connections with other pieces of trash, text fragments,numbers, torn paper, colours and textures assembled in this work. Thenin a Constructivist style Schwitters created modern, clean-cut subwaynotices; stationery and other graphics for the municipalities of Hanoverand Karlsruhe; advertisements for companies in Hanover; letterheads for

720

7. Schwitters, Ich und meineZiele, op cit

8. Ibid, p 70

9. Ibid

10. Kurt Schwitters, DesignedTypography (1928),Design Issues, vol 9, no 2,p 66

11. Ibid, p 67

7/27/2019 69838499

7/9

doctors; business cards for salesmen; and with somewhat of a moredramatic flair, publicity for himself, his Merz Advertising Agency andhis publishing house Aposs Verlag.

Schwitters favoured sans-serif type and blocky, dynamic layouts withrectilinear forms in black, white and red for accents. But he was notunaware of the short turnover period of his graphic design. Indeed, in

Untitled (Merz Advertising Headquarters), he recycles the surplus printmaterial from his own advertising agency as the basis of his collage.While these works may seem contrary, they both fundamentally rely onthe viewers ability to link connections and understand a commonvisual code. Schwitters graphic works explore the coding and visual,communication and commerce, while his collages dismantle the accus-tomed intelligible imposition of how we see.

Schwitters knowledge of the literature on advertising would implythat he knew of applied psychology theories of psychotechnics, which

Stadtisches Fursorgeamt Karlsruhe, Bezirkfursorgeverband Karlsruhe-Stadt,1929, Buchdruck on paper, 29.7 21 cm, Kurt und Ernst Stiftung, Schwit-

ters Hannover, photo: Kurt Schwitters Archiv at the Sprengel Museum

Hannover, photographer: Michael Herling/Aline Gwose Sprengel MuseumHannover, DACS, London

721

7/27/2019 69838499

8/9

heavily influenced the advertising industry in the Weimar Republic.Typical of the rationalisation tendencies of Weimar Germany, psycho-technics studied the relation of vision to text and often printed articleson advertisement in journals of applied psychology. Psychotechnicalexplorations of the advertising industry are directly tied to the ability tocontrol attention. Psychotechnics took advertising beyond the office, thefactory, the place of work: studies of the commercial use of applied psy-chology presuppose the tired eye and the wandering, confused mind,

trying to stimulate a desiring will through fatigued sensory capacities inthe sphere of consumer circulation.12

Walter Benjamins The Work of Age in the Age of its TechnicalReproducibility can be interpreted as a theory of the nature of imagesunder the aegis of industrialised modernity. Benjamin frames his argu-ment within art historical debates surrounding Alois Riegls LateRoman Art and the battles that ensued over its interpretation in the1920s between Erwin Panofskys neo-Kantian (and ultimately icono-graphic) approach and an interpretation of Riegls work as proposing achange of perception in late classical art, not a decline but changingfrom haptic to optic form, related to a transformed relationship

Left: Untitled (MERZ ADVERTISING HEADQUARTERS), 1934, collage, paper on paper, 20 12.4 cm, Kurt und Ernst

Schwitters Stiftung, Hannover, photo: Kurt Schwitters Archives at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, photographer: Michael

Herling/Aline Gwose, Sprengel Museum Hannover, # DACS, London; right: Bildpostkarte Das Undbild, 14 9 cm,

Sprengel Museum Hannover, photo: Kurt Schwitters, Archives at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, photographer:Michael Herling/Aline Gwose, Sprengel Museum Hannover, # DACS, London

722

12. Frederic J Schwartz, BlindSpots: Critical Theory andthe History of Art inTwentieth CenturyGermany, Yale UniversityPress, New Haven,London, 2005

7/27/2019 69838499

9/9

between cognition and the world. It is an early instance of media theory,not just exploring the relationship between image and history but thecausal relationship with technology. Trying to define the perceptualmutation that occurred in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Benjaminsets up binaries between previous and contemporary experiences ofvisual culture: contemplation vs. distraction, aura vs. lack of aura,

passive vs. active, art vs. document, magician vs. surgeon, cult value vs.display value. These ideas define images in modernity with a differentsense of potential cognition and an active relation to their environment.His essay is, one could say, a piece of philosophical anthropologyasking what the nature of being human is under these new and changedconditions. As opposed to a neo-Kantian view that the human sensesare a common denominator which the advertising executive cancontrol, Benjamin, like Schwitters, sees the new conditions of thoughtand cognition as an outcome of distracted perception in modernity, anaction that is a sort of knowledge, knowledge formed in the body thatbypasses concepts of the mind.

It is here, through Schwitters exploration of how sight creates

meaning, that we can see his collages and graphic design as a fundamentalexploration of the same system. If the ruin is conceived of as the visualisa-tion of absence, then Schwitters work brings these unseen systems, ouraccustomed intelligible imposition, to light. Schwitters commercial andgraphic design is an in-depth exploration of the mass media psychologyof sight, meaning and communication; it is through this research thatSchwitters is able to use the ruined, the waste products, as an anthropo-logical exploration of society from both its unpleasant outcomes and itsdecay.

I suggest therefore that the Merzbau presents the ruin and the ruined inSchwitters works not only as unfinished on principle but also as

examples of the inherent perceptual and temporal changes taking placein mass media, production and disposal, the concurrent new forms ofmediation, the before and after of Weimar society, and in so doingexplores the losses, gaps and absences in these new systems. TheGerman avant-garde was working from ruins literally and metaphori-cally, and trash was both practically and freely available; to use it wasan action that took the ruins of our society, its discarded, to questionhow meaning is constructed. The Merzbau makes a particularly appropri-ate use of the connection, contrasts and continuum between Schwitterscollages and graphic design. As he wrote: It grows more or less accordingto the principle of a metropolis.13 The Merzbau was itself a city; and justas Marx wrote that it was not the materiality of the object but the social

relations that create value, the use of urban detritus in particular, thesqualid results of mass-produced human relations, infuses the materialityof Schwitters work with an anthropological quality. Material has trans-formed into information, and how has surpassed what we see. Thegrottos in the Merzbau that still reveal this detritus most clearly couldnot be re-created in Bisseggers reconstruction because, arguably, theyare an exploration of absence, an exploration of ruin. As Schwitterswrote: One can even shout out through refuse.14 His words still echo.

723

13. Schwitters, Ich und meineZiele, op cit, p 10

14. Elizabeth Burns Gamard,Kurt Schwitters Merzbau:The Cathedral of EroticMisery, PrincetonArchitectural Press,New York, 2000, p 26