meaning.23 To date,
the formal concerns have by and large eclipsed any attempts
to apprehend the content, a condition which Schwitters himself
contributed to given his repeated allusions to the primacy of
form over content in statements regarding his art. Yet it is
through the question of content, not in a symbolic sense, but
in a hermeneutic sense, that we may begin to understand the
intimate relationship between Schwitters' ideas, processes,
and productions. The most complicated and enigmatic of his projects,
Schwitters' Merzbau mirrors the artist's fitful attempts to
negotiate a path through the miasma of his work and life. While
he was the primary interlocutor and advocate for this undertaking,
he was also its prevailing subject. Characterized by Hans Richter
as "a proliferation that never ceased," the Merzbau was a vast,
organic enterprise destined to grow unchecked. The literal residence
of Schwitters' experience, as well as a primary site of his
artistic meditations, the construction did not represent a plan
or project in the traditional sense, having no beginning or
end. In full accordance with Schwitters' 'defining principle,'
the Merzbau was perpetually unfinished, capable of being worked
and reworked repeatedly; formal refinement and artistic containment
were anathema to Schwitters' approach to both his life and his
art 24. With its labyrinth
of associations and inflections, the construction at once responded
to the outside world while also remaining wholly removed from
it. Representative of the artist's highly individualized cosmology,
the Merzbau functioned as a safe harbor from the prevailing
chaos of Weimar Germany. Yet it also provided the material for
Schwitters' general resistance to the dominant norms of the
social, political, and cultural milieu that surrounded him.
Countless obstacles make any attempt to decode the form, contents,
and meaning of the Merzbau a formidable task. First and foremost,
perhaps, is the fact that the project no longer exists. The
only evidence of it that remains is the recorded anecdotes of
individuals who saw the project, a few brief statements regarding
the project by Schwitters himself, and a series of photographs
which Schwitters took of the project over a period of several
years. These personal anecdotes and photographs - images that
Schwitters and his son recorded in a highly unsystematic manner
- are the primary literary and physical documents scholars and
historians have used to reconstitute the project.
25 Consistent with Schwitters' general approach to all his
creative undertakings, there was no 'plan' for the work itself.
However, there are rudimentary plans drawn up retrospectively
pertaining to the succession of tenants in Waldhauserstrasse,
5, the apartment building Schwitters and his family resided
in following his marriage to his wife Helma in 1917, sketches
that detail the purported ongoing extensions of Schwitters'
residence and atelier from 1919-1937 provide some insight 26.
These sketches, found by Dietmar Elger around 1980 and confirmed
as accurate by the artist's son, Ernst, are important because
they buttress the disputed claims of Hans Richter and others
regarding the extent of the construction.
27 Nonetheless, additional plans, sections, and elevations
that might specifically detail the architectural dimensions,
limits, and contents of the Merzbau, if they ever existed, have
been lost.28 Bearing
a note describing the project as a "model of a monument to humanity,"
photographs of the project appeared in a catalogue the 1936-37
New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition entitled "Fantastic
Art, Dada and Surrealism." While the illustrations from the
catalogue "only showed sections of the original Merzbau room…by
1936 the Merzbau had expanded so rapidly that it started to
sprout through the outer shell of the house (stretching finally)
from the 'subterranean to the sky." 29
Other notable exceptions are a description of the project contained
in a letter sent to Alfred Barr, Jr. in an attempt to solicit
funds for a similar construction in America. In the letter,
Schwitters includes a materials list, an estimate of the number
of work hours needed to complete a new Merzbau, and a description
of the Merzbau, a description that is notable for its outline
of the extensiveness of the project:
I am building an abstract...sculpture which people can walk
into...I am building a composition without boundaries; each
individual part is at the same time a frame for the neighboring
parts, all parts are mutually independent.
Another description of Schwitters' project is contained in
a letter, supplemented by a plan sketch, the artist wrote to
his friends, the publisher Christof Spengemann and his wife
Luise on 25 April, 1946. (Fig. 6).30
Eight spaces were merzed in the house. Practically, my Merzbau
was not an individual space, but…sections of the Merzbau were
distributed over the whole house, from one room to the next,
on the balcony, in two spaces in the cellar, on the second floor,
on the earth [outside]). 31
Schwitters himself did little to clarify the situation. Later,
in the same letter to the Spengemann's, the project is described
as extensive and can almost be re-imagined as limitless.
Another problem that surfaces is the fact that Schwitters himself
did not seek to expose the project to public scrutiny through
either publication or exhibit.32
Despite his penchant for actively promoting not only his own
work35, but the work of many friends and colleagues
he supported, Schwitters made relatively few published statements
regarding the Merzbau. The earliest printed statements concerning
the project were in "Ich und meine Ziele." In 1933, photographs
of the Merzbau (figs. 1 and 2) were published, approximately
ten to twelve years after its probable inception.33
In "Ich und meine Ziele," Schwitters discusses his Kathedrale
des Erotischen Elends ("Cathedral of Erotic Misery") when detailing
the full range of his work.34
He did not, however, refer to the project as the Merzbau - the
title by which it is most well known, until his article "Le
Merzbau" appeared in an issue of the short-lived journal abstraction-création,
art non-figuratif in 1933 35.
Though his brief descriptions of the work and its methodology
are significant for outlining the various components of the
construction, Schwitters refrains from explaining the myriad
literary and historical associations which resonate throughout,
suggesting that it would be too complicated to do so. 36
Instead, he leaves the task of interpreting the work to
the viewer.
The deliberately private nature of the project further exaggerates
the difficulty in comprehending the Merzbau. Schwitters acknowledged
the distance between his private self and his public demeanor,
specifically as it pertained to the Merzbau, in his first public
statement regarding the existence of the project, here referred
to as Die Kathedrale of erotischen Elends (KdeE) :
...as a result of its ambiguity (the KdeE) is very difficult
to understand...but a complete understanding is not necessary
in the case of things that are so unusual. The KdeE is a typical
violet that blooms in obscurity. Perhaps my KdeE will always
remain in obscurity, but not me...
Adding further credence to his faith in the artistic project
in which he had engaged, Schwitters continued with recognition
of the importance of Merz and abstraction, albeit with resigned
hint of his own fate:
I know for sure that a great day will come for myself and
for other important individuals of the abstract movement when
we shall influence a whole generation, only I fear that I personally
will not live to see the day.
Since the construction was almost entirely contained within
the apartment he shared with his wife and son, few people saw
it.37 While some of
these individuals have contributed significantly to the understanding
of the Merzbau, the record of what they saw has often been written
many years after having seen the project and is likely inaccurate.
In addition, few of these individuals, Richard Huelsenbeck and
Ernst Schwitters' being the most notable exceptions, have attempted
to speculate on the nature of its content. That the project
remained all but hidden from view during the more than thirteen
years Schwitters was known to have worked on it is itself remarkable.
Not unlike his Dadaist associates Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara,
he was equally at ease in the world of commerce and publishing
as he was in the world of art. The extent of his promotional
endeavors suggests that Schwitters was of an uncommon, if ironic,
practical bent and, as such, perhaps unmatched among his peers
in terms of his business acumen. Yet despite his competence
- and considerable confidence - as a businessman and propagandist,
Schwitters was reticent to discuss or promote the Merzbau publicly.
It was "pure, unsaleable creation," wholly distinct from his
manifold and notoriously public activities 38.
In the early-1980's, a reconstruction of the largest and most
well documented room of the Hannover Merzbau was installed in
the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. While the installation has
made a significant contribution to understanding the formal
and material nature of the later phases of the work, it does
not describe the overall spatial parameters of the Schwitters
construction 39. Since
the reconstruction depends almost entirely on photographs taken
at least seven years after the initial inception of the project,
it does not - indeed cannot - incorporate the materials and
artifacts that make up the core, or heart, of the Merzbau. While
the relative scale of what is thought to be the main room, a
room given the subtitle Das Blaue Fenster ("Blue Window") (fig.
1), is established, the way into and through the Merzbau is
obscured by the overwhelming sculptural affect of the later
developments. The rooms, cavities, and figural excrescence contained
within the inner recesses of the Merzbau are all but hidden
by the "purist" forms Schwitters used to cover over the earlier
phases of the project during the late-20's and 30's. 40
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