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Lot Essay
‘What is the real reason the newspapers won’t admit that Merz is the Constructivism the age requires? That’s easy: because I’ve said it first.’ (Kurt Schwitters, ‘Tran 35’, Der Sturm VI, 1924, p. 124)
Made at the height of Schwitters’ involvement with International Constructivism, Das Richard Freytagbild (The Richard Freytag Picture) is one of the artist’s great wooden relief paintings. Created in 1927 it belongs to a period in which a final upsurge in the Constructivist nature of Schwitters’ art that had taken place throughout the 1920s started to combine with an attempt to reintegrate the rhythms and forms of nature into his work. ‘Modern art following a completely intuitive and independent course, has reached the same results as modern science.’ Schwitters had written in collaboration with El Lissiztky in their short-lived but centrally important magazine Nasci in 1924. ‘Like science, it has reduced form to its basic elements in order to reconstruct it according to the universal laws of nature; and in doing this, both have arrived at the same formula: EVERY FORM IS THE FROZEN INSTANTANEOUS PICTURE OF A PROCESS. THUS A WORK OF ART IS A STOPPING PLACE IN THE ROAD OF BECOMING AND NOT THE FIXED GOAL’ (El Lissitzky & Kurt Schwitters, Nasci, 1924, in J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, exh. cat., New York, 1985, p. 137).
Around 1926 Schwitters’ Constructivist development of the ‘Merzbild’ - a picture assembled from the detritus of everyday life into a new, cohesive and aesthetically pleasing order - had reached a turning point. In the mid-1920s along with a wide range of former Dadaists and Constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky with whom he collaborated on a number of projects at this time, Schwitters had been drawn to the ideal of integrating the constructive principle that their art revealed, into the wider realms of life itself. Part of a search for a gesamtkunstwerk or total-work-of-art, it was towards this end that Schwitters had persisted in the laborious and time-consuming construction of an entire Merz environment: his Merzbau or Merz-House, constructed out of found fragments in his home in Hannover throughout the 1920s. By the late 1920s however, Schwitters had grown aware of the limitations that reducing his art of assemblage to the mere geometry of the Constructivist style produced and was now seeking to allow each ‘element’ of his art to function more naturally and autonomously as a unit of meaning in a more ‘universal’ way.
Fusing the chaotic, deconstructive aesthetics of Dada and his early Merz pictures with the ordering principles he had found first in Mondrian and Van Doesburg’s de Stijl and then in the Constructivism of artists like Moholy-Nagy and El Lisstitzky, Schwitters sought now to create a mature form of Merz that aimed to expose and articulate the inner rhythm of nature running through all his assembled forms. ‘Nature of Chance often carries together things which correspond to that which we call rhythm’, Schwitters wrote, ‘the only task of the artist is to recognise and limit, to limit and recognise’ (Kurt Schwitters, ‘Kunst und Zeiten’ 1926, in J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, London, 1985, p.189).
The period that the Richard Freytagbild epitomises is one in which Schwitters was moving towards what has been described as a ‘Vitalist’ approach. This was an approach, rooted in a sense of universal nature, that incorporated biomorphic and organic forms into his work and sought to infuse the chaotic, hand-made qualities of his early Merz pictures - made with urban detritus - with an underlying sense of constructivist logic but without resorting to the hard-edged geometry or cold industrialised purity characterized by movements such as de Stijl or the work of artists like Lázló Moholy-Nagy and Mies van der Rohe.
Working with deliberately hand-crafted geometric forms of flat colour that build together into a cohesive and lyrical whole, Schwitters’ Richard Freytagbild is one that hints at a universal and integrated rhythm or language of form that articulates and makes sense of all disparate and distinctly autonomous elements and forms. Merging the elements of painting, sculpture and relief into a three-dimensional play of illusory and tangible form, the Richard Freytagbild, follows, in this respect, the structural logic of Schwitters’ Merzbau. As John Elderfield has pointed out about this picture, ‘the 1927 picture Richard Freytagbild, ... grades the pictorial space through elements of varying relief and echoes their shapes in the shapes of the background. And just as earlier this had produced a combination of Schwitters’ two previously separate kinds of Merzbilder – the high relief ... and the flatter, large-collage…– so now this produced a combination (in Richard Freytagbild and similar works) of Schwitters’ Constructivist high-reliefs and flatter ‘jigsaw’ pictures. The result is a kind of bas-relief painting; in this case, a part geometric, part organic one, which relates to some of Arp’s earlier bas-reliefs’ (J. Elderfield, op cit, p. 186).
As if to reinforce this overriding sense of play and reconstruction at the heart of his work, the title of this picture is one that derives from a label that Schwitters has stuck onto the back of this painting bearing the name: ‘Richard Freitag, Möbeltransport’ (furniture movers). The entire relief construction has been built upon a background comprised of a series of floorboard-like planks that may themselves once have belonged to a packing crate or the structure of a piece of furniture. The title of the work, which Schwitters has humorously amended to the spelling of the name of a little-known 19th Century German painter - Richard Freytag (1820-1894) - therefore also deliberately emphasises the central role that chance, spontaneous impulse and the making use of all elements and objects found in daily life play in the creation of the new constructive, deconstructive and reconstructive language that Schwitters repeatedly defined and redefined as Merz.
Made at the height of Schwitters’ involvement with International Constructivism, Das Richard Freytagbild (The Richard Freytag Picture) is one of the artist’s great wooden relief paintings. Created in 1927 it belongs to a period in which a final upsurge in the Constructivist nature of Schwitters’ art that had taken place throughout the 1920s started to combine with an attempt to reintegrate the rhythms and forms of nature into his work. ‘Modern art following a completely intuitive and independent course, has reached the same results as modern science.’ Schwitters had written in collaboration with El Lissiztky in their short-lived but centrally important magazine Nasci in 1924. ‘Like science, it has reduced form to its basic elements in order to reconstruct it according to the universal laws of nature; and in doing this, both have arrived at the same formula: EVERY FORM IS THE FROZEN INSTANTANEOUS PICTURE OF A PROCESS. THUS A WORK OF ART IS A STOPPING PLACE IN THE ROAD OF BECOMING AND NOT THE FIXED GOAL’ (El Lissitzky & Kurt Schwitters, Nasci, 1924, in J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, exh. cat., New York, 1985, p. 137).
Around 1926 Schwitters’ Constructivist development of the ‘Merzbild’ - a picture assembled from the detritus of everyday life into a new, cohesive and aesthetically pleasing order - had reached a turning point. In the mid-1920s along with a wide range of former Dadaists and Constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky with whom he collaborated on a number of projects at this time, Schwitters had been drawn to the ideal of integrating the constructive principle that their art revealed, into the wider realms of life itself. Part of a search for a gesamtkunstwerk or total-work-of-art, it was towards this end that Schwitters had persisted in the laborious and time-consuming construction of an entire Merz environment: his Merzbau or Merz-House, constructed out of found fragments in his home in Hannover throughout the 1920s. By the late 1920s however, Schwitters had grown aware of the limitations that reducing his art of assemblage to the mere geometry of the Constructivist style produced and was now seeking to allow each ‘element’ of his art to function more naturally and autonomously as a unit of meaning in a more ‘universal’ way.
Fusing the chaotic, deconstructive aesthetics of Dada and his early Merz pictures with the ordering principles he had found first in Mondrian and Van Doesburg’s de Stijl and then in the Constructivism of artists like Moholy-Nagy and El Lisstitzky, Schwitters sought now to create a mature form of Merz that aimed to expose and articulate the inner rhythm of nature running through all his assembled forms. ‘Nature of Chance often carries together things which correspond to that which we call rhythm’, Schwitters wrote, ‘the only task of the artist is to recognise and limit, to limit and recognise’ (Kurt Schwitters, ‘Kunst und Zeiten’ 1926, in J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, London, 1985, p.189).
The period that the Richard Freytagbild epitomises is one in which Schwitters was moving towards what has been described as a ‘Vitalist’ approach. This was an approach, rooted in a sense of universal nature, that incorporated biomorphic and organic forms into his work and sought to infuse the chaotic, hand-made qualities of his early Merz pictures - made with urban detritus - with an underlying sense of constructivist logic but without resorting to the hard-edged geometry or cold industrialised purity characterized by movements such as de Stijl or the work of artists like Lázló Moholy-Nagy and Mies van der Rohe.
Working with deliberately hand-crafted geometric forms of flat colour that build together into a cohesive and lyrical whole, Schwitters’ Richard Freytagbild is one that hints at a universal and integrated rhythm or language of form that articulates and makes sense of all disparate and distinctly autonomous elements and forms. Merging the elements of painting, sculpture and relief into a three-dimensional play of illusory and tangible form, the Richard Freytagbild, follows, in this respect, the structural logic of Schwitters’ Merzbau. As John Elderfield has pointed out about this picture, ‘the 1927 picture Richard Freytagbild, ... grades the pictorial space through elements of varying relief and echoes their shapes in the shapes of the background. And just as earlier this had produced a combination of Schwitters’ two previously separate kinds of Merzbilder – the high relief ... and the flatter, large-collage…– so now this produced a combination (in Richard Freytagbild and similar works) of Schwitters’ Constructivist high-reliefs and flatter ‘jigsaw’ pictures. The result is a kind of bas-relief painting; in this case, a part geometric, part organic one, which relates to some of Arp’s earlier bas-reliefs’ (J. Elderfield, op cit, p. 186).
As if to reinforce this overriding sense of play and reconstruction at the heart of his work, the title of this picture is one that derives from a label that Schwitters has stuck onto the back of this painting bearing the name: ‘Richard Freitag, Möbeltransport’ (furniture movers). The entire relief construction has been built upon a background comprised of a series of floorboard-like planks that may themselves once have belonged to a packing crate or the structure of a piece of furniture. The title of the work, which Schwitters has humorously amended to the spelling of the name of a little-known 19th Century German painter - Richard Freytag (1820-1894) - therefore also deliberately emphasises the central role that chance, spontaneous impulse and the making use of all elements and objects found in daily life play in the creation of the new constructive, deconstructive and reconstructive language that Schwitters repeatedly defined and redefined as Merz.