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In 1923 Schwitters tried to harmonize Merz, his own particular brand of Dada anarchy, with the influence of the new Constructivist trends, which he had absorbed through his contact with the Dutch group De Stijl and with El Lissitzky who had visited him in Hanover for the first time in 1922. In addition to the imprint of the Dutch geometric painting, one should also draw attention to the strong influence of the exhibition of contemporary Russian art which Schwitters had visited at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin the previous autumn.
Through his Merz collages and assemblages which dominated his artistic production at this time, Schwitters aimed to achieve an artistic synthesis, using valueless materials to create compositions of precise geometry created in a new aesthetic mode of pure abstraction. For his constructions Schwitters, inspired by the Revolutionary atmosphere of post war Germany, reused all sorts of thrown away objects, convinced that "one can also shout out with old rubbish." Kurt Schwitters had invented the word Merz after he spotted a truncated version of the word Kommerz and was fascinated by its sonority. The idea of Merz was a combination of the Dadaist tendency to irony with paradox, achieved through the transformation of objects, and the idea of art as construction derived from the Russian avant garde. It was also indebted to Cubist collages although, in contrast to the objects which the Cubists introduced in their works, those which Schwitters deployed had no narrative content within the composition. These objects had no value in themselves, but rather as integral parts of the work; they were not representations of external reality, but were merely signs.
According to Christopher Green (1995), the present work was painted in Holland during the "Dada Tour" which Schwitters made in company with Theo van Doesburg, Petro van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszár in the first months of 1923. The word Kijkduin, included by Schwitters in the title of his Merz painting, is the name of a Dutch town. Despite the Constructivist tendency which is obvious in the way of arranging the materials, the use of found materials-some pieces of driftwood and other fragments washed up by the tide-emphasises the concept of fate in art and suggests Hans Arp's Dada works.
Schwitters achieves a perfect balance between the chaotic spirit of the found objects which derives from Dada, and the geometric ordering of those objects; between the slightly unfinished and eroded look of the old bare wood and the uniformity of the painted surfaces; between the two dimensional element of order which is introduced by the flat geometric planes painted to form squares and lines of colours, and the three dimensionality produced by the relief of the constructed objects which are stuck on with glue or nailed on. In this world of contrasts which is the world of Merz, Schwitters aimed-and succeeded-in combining two ideas which dominated all of twentieth century art: chaos and order: "My aim is the total Merz work of art, which brings together all types of art in an artistic unity."
Paloma Alarcó
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