Kurt Schwitters - Merz Quotes

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Just as soon as the great and glorious Revolution broke out [1918 - after World War 1] I gave notice and now live entirely for art. For a while, I tried to create new forms of art from the remains of the old culture. From this Merz painting emerged, painting that happily used every material – Pelikan [was a famous ink mark, then] colors or the rubbish from the rubbish heap. So I experienced the Revolution in the most delightful way and pass for a Dadaist, without being one. As a result, I could introduce Dadaism in Holland [together with Theo van Doesburg and his wife Nele] with complete impartiality. In Holland I became familiar with architecture for the first time.

Kurt Schwitters
Merz stands for the freedom of all fetters... Merz also means tolerance towards any artistically motivated limitation. Every artist must be allowed to mould a picture out of nothing but blotting paper, for example, provided he is capable of moulding a picture.

Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters is the inventor of Merz and I, and aside of himself, he recognizes no one as a Merz artist or an I artist with highest regards.

Kurt Schwitters
In the war [World War 1.] things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready... I felt myself freed and had to shout my jubilation out to the world. Out of parsimony I took what I could find to do this, because we were now an impoverished country. One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did, nailing and gluing it [gluing his collage art] together. I called it 'Merz'; it was a prayer about the victorious end of the war, victorious as once again peace had won in the end; everything had broken down in any case and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz.

Kurt Schwitters
Merz paintings are abstract works of art. The word 'Merz' essentially means the totality of all imaginable materials that can be used for artistic purposes and technically the principle that all of these individual materials have equal value. Merz art makes use not just of paint and canvas, brush and palette, but all the materials visible to the eye and all tools needed.... the wheel off a pram, wire mesh, string and cotton balls – these are factors of equal value to paints. The artist creates by choosing, distributing and reshaping the materials.

Kurt Schwitters
In his introduction to the recently published 'Dada Almanach' [1920], Huelsenbeck writes: 'Dada is making a kind of propaganda against culture'. Thus Huelsendadaismus is politically oriented, against art and against culture. I am tolerant and allow everyone his own view of the world, but am compelled to state that such an outlook is alien to Merz. Merz aims, as a matter of principle, only at art, because no man can serve two masters.... Merz energetically and as a matter of principle rejects Herr Richard Huelsenbeck's inconsequential and dilettantish views on art.

Kurt Schwitters
Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork.... they will receive my new work as they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn.

Kurt Schwitters