Merzbau MERZ: I could not, in fact, see the reason why old tickers, driftwood, cloakroom tabs, wires,

, and parts of wheels, burtons and old rubbish found in attics and refuse dumps should nor be as suitable, as material for painting as the paints made in factories. ... I called my new works utilizing such materials "Merz." This is the second syllable of "Kommerz." It originated in the "Merzbild," a work in which the word "Merz," cut out from an advertisement of the "Kommerz und Privatbank" and pasted on, could be read among the abstract element.... I looked for a collective term for this new style, since I could not fit my pictures into older categories.... So I called all my work as a species "Merz" pictures after the characteristic one. Later I extended the use of the word "Merz," first to my poetry ... and finally to all my related activities. Now I call myself "Merz." -Kurt

THRESHOLD: the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced While the German artist may have incorporated elements of both Dadaism and Surrealism, the truest description of his style is another nonsense word, one he corned himself: "Merz." Merzbau was destroyed during World War II Sculptor, painter, poet and writer, Kurt Schwitters was a German based Dada artist during World War II. His works were included in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition in 1937. Merzbau was initially titled Cathedral Of Erotic Misery, however due to the new political situation, Schwitters quickly renamed it. Attributing the term Merz to many of his works, Schwitters explains: 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. Apart from photographs, nothing remains of Merzbau or the two later similar works made by Schwitters.

Schwitters art was more than just the collage object itself. It was a whole process, philosophy, and lifestyle, which he called merza nonsense word that became his kind of personal brand. He was a merz-artist who made merzpaintings and merz-drawings, and naturally, the place where he merzedhis studio and family homewas his merz-building, or Merzbau. Over the years, this Merzbau developed into a kind of abstract walk-in collage composed of grottoes and columns and found objects, ever-shifting and ever-expanding. It was more than just a studio; it was itself a work of art.
Schwitters worked on the Hanover Merzbau from around 1923 until 1937, when he fled to Norway to escape the threat of Nazi Germany. Sadly, in 1943, while he was in exile, it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. The original Merzbau was gone forever. No one would ever again be able to stop in to chat with Schwitters and examine his growth of a studio. So how can we learn more about this onceliving work of art? One way is through photographs from the time. In 1933, Wilhelm Redemann took three black-andwhite photographs of the Merzbaus main room, one of which you can see here. These photographs are an invaluable resource for understanding what the Merzbau must have looked like at the time. But these photographs only capture what the Merzbau looked like in one particular instant. For many artworks, that would be enoughbut the Merzbau was not just a static painting or a sculpture, but a whole environment, and one that was in constant flux. One day the Merzbau could have a new column of debris stacked in the corner, the next day a new grotto dedicated to an artist friend. Photographs cant quite capture the Merzbaus expanding, shifiting in nature.

and thus construct a kind of narrative of the Merzbau. I discovered that when youre trying to understand something like the Merzbau, archives like these are critical. Through the written word, you can get an idea of not just what the space was like in a specific moment, but how it developed and grew, the methods of its expansion, even what the rooms smelled like. One of the many influences of the cabinet includes Dada artist Kurt Schwitters [3], a man whose Wunderkammer was not a cabinet at all, but a series of inhabitable rooms [4]. What he called the Merzbau was the result of an almost manic process of total inclusion. Schwitters began by collecting seemingly random objects - newspaper clippings and ticket stubs for instance - which he used to create the Merz column, a strange hodgepodge of objects. The column expanded as he added to it, eventually becoming a dense interior which was always changing. Schwitters displayed and concealed the objects collected from his own life in an interior made with many layers of collaged surface and geometry. He would literally paste over previous work and add more material and surface as the collection expanded to the point where objects were actually absorbed in its many layers. This relentless process created architecture, not merely a place to display his cherished possessions. With the Merzbau Schwitters created a context of one, a micro universe of experimental forms. It was a spatial manifestation of his constructivist influences and completely disconnected from the outside world.
Merzbau Creator: Schwitters, Kurt, 1887-1948 Title: Merzbau Date: Schwitters began working on Merzbau in about 1923, and continued his work until 1937 when he emigrated to Lysaker, near Oslo, the same year that a number of his works were included in the Entartete Kunst exhibition. Date destroyed or lost: 1943 Nationality: German Former repository :Collection of Kurt Schwitters Circumstances of destruction or loss: Destroyed in a British air raid in October 1943. Notes: Merzbau was a constructed environment that comprised eight rooms in Schwitter's house at 5 Waldhausenstrasse in Hannover. Schwitters referred to the central column of the construction as the The Cathedral of Erotic Misery; and in its niches a variety of personal artifacts were enshrined including hair, clothing, fingernail clippings, and a bottle of his own urine holding artificial flowers. The vaious compartments were given names such as "the 10% War Invalid" "Ruhr District" "Goethe's Grotto" and "Sex-Murders Cavern." Over the course of 14 years Schwitters continuously added to and modified the Merzbau creating "caves" and "grottos" dedicated to friends and fellow artists. A later Merzbau creation, the Haus am Bakken, that Schwitters began in Lysaker, Norway, was destroyed by fire in 1951. Subject: World War, 1939-1945 -- Destruction and pillage -- Germany World War, 1939-1945 -- Art and the war Assemblage (Art) Interior spaces Dadaism Shrines Photo description: unlabeled clipping Source: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library Photo Archive, 225 South Street, Williamstown MA, 01267 Type: Assemblage Collection Lost Ar

One of the strangest interiors ever designed is German artist Kurt Scwitters's collage of architectural fragments, wood scraps, toys, tree branches, and newspaper clippings he called Merzbau. Destroyed by bombs in the Second World War, it is also one of the least well known. Schwitters began it in 1923 and by the time of the war it had grown to dominate his whole apartment, from cellar to balcony. Elizabeth Burns Gamard unravels for us the work's history and meaning, which has something to do with architecture, something to do with the simultaneous expression of space and time, and something to do with the notion (shared by Schwitters's follower Joseph Beuys) that "Everyone is an artist."

Merz, an arbitrary word fragment taken from Kommerzbank, which appeared in one of Schwitters' early paper collages, has also been interpreted to mean "castoff,"alluding to the found nature of his materials and the transformative power of the artistic process. Schwitters came to use the word Merz to describe a range of works and activities; Merz became a personal movement, a philosophy, a way of life. "Merz stands for freedom from all fetters, for the sake of artistic creation. Freedom is not lack of restraint, but the product of strict artistic discipline," he declared. Merzbau then, was a collage, or "cast-off," building, an architecture continually in flux, a simultaneous expression of space and time. (Unsurprisingly, he said that Sigfried Gidieon was one of the few people who would understand his work.) Gamard's evaluation of Schwitters' artwork--"never about the object itself, but the dynamic of relations that appeared in the course of their making"-clarifies its relevance to architecture, which Schwi tters himself observed, "is actually more like the idea of Merz than all other arts."