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A Study on Critical Representation of Modernity in Kurt Schwitters' Merz
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
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Kurt Schwitters(1887-1948) made his own art world while influenced by expressionism and dadaism. After World War I when he started to work, the situation was very confusing politically because of the aftereffect of the war and art world also became more critical for the society of the time. Therefore, most of the artists of the time showed extreme aspects such as pursuing of arts including political messages or pursuing of only artistic autonomy by keeping their distance from political situation. In existing art history, Schwitters has been evaluated as an artist close to the latter one by reflecting the context. But, this thesis considered Schwitters as an artist who intended to criticize the society of the time through the Merz’ unlike the existing evaluation. Therefore, this thesis interpreted that critical viewpoint about the society in Merz has political implications in new sense, unlike the existing evaluation that Schwitters pursued art for the art by keeping his distance from social situation. Furthermore, Schwitters' attitude taking critical viewpoint continuously for main stream should be considered to pursue differences consistently without his intentional assimilation into the main stream and include critical intention for modernism's planning, swingback to the same. Therefore, it reconsidered the meaning of Merz's technical characteristics functioning as a continuous negation for main stream in art world and social․political context of the time. Chapter Ⅱ connected Schwitters' own line to Merz's characteristics. Schwitters continuously deconstructed fixation, the completed form of existing work, through the Merz. The characteristics of Merz pursue non-fixation and fragmentation and those characteristics have possibilities to overturn fixed frame of the society. Therefore, this researcher evaluated that characteristics of Merz show Schwitters' viewpoint about social and political situation of the time, not just meaning of Schwitters' artistic creativity. For that, this research reconsidered the meaning of Schwitters' non-politics and examined the method uniqueness of Schwitters represents critical viewpoint about the time through the Walter Benjamin's allegory concept. Chapter Ⅲ analyzed that <Merzbau> represents Schwitters' critical viewpoint about social main stream of the time. Schwitters took critical viewpoint about German nationalism organized ideologically and society and politics of the time when capitalism and functionalism, based on rationality, were rampant through the <Merzbau>. It reflected the process of continuous criticism for social and political situation of the time, intending to eliminate differences with one purpose and belief and unify different things to the same theory. In this sense, the planning of total art, Schwitters pursued through the <Merzbau>, was the method refusing unified order through the continuous deconstruction and process of deconstruction, not organized art work with the same formative theory. Artistic traces of Schwitters pursued the differences continuously without inclusion in one frame or theory, so they could be endless works showing his own politics by getting out of the context of modernism.
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