E: tompage87@gmail.com
T: @PhotosPage

20.2.13

A Tribute To...

a Schwitters inspired photograph


I had never heard of Kurt Schwitters when I rode past Tate Britain this week. I wasn't in the best of moods so was somewhat distracted.

Kurt was an artist. A painter apparently. Famous for his merz work. In fact he invented the technique. Well he called it painting when really he was cutting, ripping, sticking, layering perhaps even occasionally kicking found objects and textures into a fairly satisfying conclusion. In other words, a collage.

What was fascinating about his work was the story that was wrapped up in it. It is the nature of collage making that you cut or rip out found imagery and find some kind of order of the the mess you've made. As you're probably using magazines or newspapers for source material you kind of end up solving a cultural puzzle in your head. Gluing Simon Cowell's smug head to the top of Satan's trident perhaps. As Kurt was forced to travel across Europe before and during the second world war the items he used as his patchwork become remarkable. Telling a tale about his own personal journey and the world around him.


He lived and worked in Hanover, Germany building merz houses believe it or not before his work was denounced as degenerate along with a host of other artists work. He fled to Norway feeding his artistic urges with the rubbish and found objects of his journey. These small merz mark the time and the culture. better than keeping a diary in my opinion. 


He did eventually flee again this time to Britain, only to be locked up in a camp that can only be described as heaven. Artists, philosophers and thinkers who had fled from the tyranny of Germany were housed in a camp far away from the destruction and devastation of the rest of europe, tucked away on the isle of man. Safe, watered, fed they were free to work as they pleased, and he did, creating at least 200 new works. They even held regular exhibitions. "If Carlsberg did POW camps" is what springs to mind...

He was later 'released' and went on to influence the wider British art scene and arguably still does. It's hard to envisage what British pop art would have looked like without him. More importantly though my mood was better for having discovered him.


 Tate Britain 
 £10 a ticket  (£5 with the Art Pass)
on  til 12th May  2013

No comments:

Post a Comment