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List of illustrations

  • Construction for Noble Ladies
  • Construction for Noble Ladies, detail
  • Bottle of Suze (La bouteille de Suze)
  • Charlene
  • White Form (Weiße Form)
  • An [To] Anna Blume poem
  • Untitled (collaged portrait postcard of Kurt Schwitters for Hannah Höch)
  • The Worker Picture (Das Arbeiterbild)
  • Herwarth Walden and his wife, Nell, in the dining room of their apartment on Potsdamerstraße, Berlin, with two works by Marc Chagall on the background walls
  • The War of the Nations: Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings: Compiled from the Mid-week Pictorial
  • Barricades before the Mosse Press Building, Schützenstraße, Berlin
  • Prost Noske!—The proletariat is disarmed! (Prost Noske!—Das Proletariat ist entwaffnet!)
  • Drawing A6 (Zeichnung A6)
  • Germany: A Winter’s Fairy Tale (Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen)
  • Merz Picture 9b, The Great I Picture/Merz Picture K7 (?) (Merzbild 9b das große Ichbild/Merzbild K7 [?])
  • Abstraction No. 16 (Sleeping Crystal) (Abstraktion No. 16 [Schlafender Kristall])
  • Drawing (Zeichnung)
  • Abstraction 26 (Tender Symphony) (Abstraktion 26 [Zarte Sinfonie])
  • Abstraction 148 (Abstraktion 148)
  • The Worker Picture (Das Arbeiterbild)
  • Antistrike poster produced by the Council of People's Deputies
  • The Worker Picture (Das Arbeiterbild), detail
  • The Worker Picture (Das Arbeiterbild), detail
  • Alarm Clock I (Réveil matin I)
  • L Merz Picture L3 (The Merz Picture) (L Merzbild L3 [Das Merzbild])
  • Mz. 170 (Voids in Space) (Mz. 170 [Leere im Raum])
  • Merzbild 25A (The Star Picture) (Merzbild 25A [Das Sternenbild])
  • Revolving
  • The Worker Picture (Das Arbeiterbild)
  • Revolving, detail
  • Revolving, detail
  • Construction for Noble Ladies
  • Construction for Noble Ladies, detail
  • Device
  • Construction for Noble Ladies, detail
  • Mz. 410 (Something or Other) (Mz. 410 [Irgendsowas])
  • Brochure for Celle People’s Furniture (Celler Volks-Möbel), Hannover
  • Drawing A6 (Zeichnung A6), detail
  • Merzz. 96 Standing Yellow (Merzz. 96 stehen Gelb)
  • Mz 316 ische gelb (Mz 316 ische Yellow)
  • Untitled (itter) (Ohne titel [itter])
  • After the Marne, Joffre Visited the Front by Auto (Apres la Marne, Joffre visita le front en auto)
  • The Architect's Table
  • Untitled
  • This is Friedel Vordemberge's Wire Spring (Dieser Ist Friedel Vordemberges Drahtfrühling)
  • This is Friedel Vordemberge's Wire Spring (Dieser Ist Friedel Vordemberges Drahtfrühling), detail
  • Mz. 26, 33 Görlitz
  • Kynast-Fest
  • Cover of Merz 11 (Advertising Typography/Pelikan Issue [Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer])
  • Cover of Merz 11 (Advertising Typography/Pelikan Issue [Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer]), detail
  • Central spread of Merz 11 (Advertising Typography/Pelikan Issue [Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer])
  • Opening page of Typographische Mitteilungen
  • Pelikan Tinte
  • Pelikan Tinte, Schreibband, Kohlenpapier (advertising maquette for Pelikan ink, typewriter ribbon, and carbon paper)
  • Pelikan-Tinte (advertisement for Pelikan ink)
  • Interior page of Merz 11 (Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer)
  • Final spread of Merz 11 (Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer)
  • Central spread of Merz 11 (Typoreklame/Pelikan-Nummer), detail
  • Final page of Abstrakte Malerei und Typographie
  • Untitled (Pelikan Wagner) (Ohne Titel [Pelikan Wagner])
  • Untitled (WAGNER AND VIENNA) (Ohne Titel [WAGNER UND WIEN])
  • Untitled (Speckgumm) (Ohne Titel [Speckgumm])
  • Buchheister’s Skyy-scraper Hanover (Buchheisters Wollkenkratzer Hannover)
  • Untitled (Mz ELIKAN ELIKAN ELIKAN)
  • Untitled (Mz ELIKAN ELIKAN ELIKAN), detail
  • Pelikan-Tinte (advertisement for Pelikan ink), detail
  • Page from Merz 14/15, The Scarecrow (Die Scheuche)
  • Diagram of the Systemschrift (systematic script)
  • Poster for the exhibition Dammerstock Housing Estate: The Functional Dwelling (Dammerstock-Siedlung: Die Gebrauchswohnung)
  • Notice for the Hanover transit authority Ãœstra (Ãœberlandwerke und Straßenbahnen Hannover AG)
  • This is Friedel Vordemberge's Wire Spring (Dieser Ist Friedel Vordemberges Drahtfrühling), detail
  • Letterhead design for the Hanover municipal gardens office (Städtische Gartendirektion)
  • Merz Werbe letterhead (Letter to Piet Zwart from Schwitters)
  • 29/9
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail view showing west wall and the Blue Window
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail view showing east wall
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail view showing south wall
  • Plan of Hanover Merzbau, first completed room
  • Plan of Waldhausenstraße 5, Hanover, ground floor, indicating primary Merzbau room (#1, at rear) and ancillary spaces
  • Merzbau Hanover reconstruction
  • Frühlicht, vol. 1, no. 3
  • Studio photograph of Kurt Schwitters with The Holy Affliction (Die Heilige Bekümmernis)
  • House Merz (Haus Merz)
  • House Merz (Haus Merz)
  • Untitled (Merzcolumn) (Ohne Titel [Merzsäule])
  • The First Day (Der Erste Tag)
  • The Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama: Germany’s Rise and Fall through Teacher Hagendorf or The Fantastic Life Story of the Oberdada (Das Grosse Plasto Dio Dada Drama: Deutschlands Grösse und Untergang durch Lehrer Hagendorf oder die phantastische Lebensgeschichte des Oberdada)
  • Segment of the Barbarossa Grotto, most likely identical to the Kyffhäuser grotto (part of the Hanover Merzbau)
  • Grotto with Doll’s Head (part of the Hanover Merzbau)
  • Madonna (part of the Hanover Merzbau)
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail
  • Hanover Merzbau, detail
  • KdeE (Cathedral of Erotic Misery) (KdeE [Kathedrale des erotischen Elends])
  • Holy Stairs Sanctuary, Chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum
  • Photogram with White Heart/Photogram I (Fotogramm mit weißem Herz/Photogramm I)
  • Shroud of Turin displayed on the steps of the Turin Cathedral
  • Shroud of Turin, detail
  • Deposition and the Shroud of Turin of Giovanni Battista della Rovere
  • Newhaven Fishwife
  • Abstract Cabinet (Kabinett der Abstrakten)
  • Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart)
  • Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart)
  • Relief wall in the Merz Barn, Elterwater, England
  • New Merz Picture (Neues Merzbild)
  • New Merz Picture (Neues Merzbild), detail
  • Pipe and Sheet Music (Pipe et partition)
  • As with Picasso (Wie bei Picasso)
  • Untitled (Djupvasshytta, Relief) (Ohne Titel [Djupvasshytta, Relief])
  • Exhibition Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst), in the arcades of the Munich Hofgarten
  • Yellow Six (Gelbe Sechs)
  • Untitled (NTHER WAGNER HANOVER) (Ohne Titel [NTHER WAGNER HANNOVER])
  • Djupvand 3
  • The Körting Picture (Körtingbild)
  • Untitled (Merz Picture with Teeth) (Ohne Titel [Merzbild mit Zähnen])
  • Symphony for a Poet (?) (Sinfonie für einen Dichter [?])
  • Untitled (ord) (Ohne Titel [ord])
  • Picture with Soft Rod (Bild mit weicher Stange)
  • like an old master
  • 47.15 pine trees c 26
  • C 35 paper clouds
  • Untitled (Merz Picture with Algae) (Ohne Titel [Merzbild mit Algen])
  • Untitled (The All-Embracing Sculpture) (Ohne Titel [Die allumfassende Plastik])
  • Untitled (Memory of Hjertøya) (Ohne Titel [Erinnerung an Hjertøya])
  • Passport of the German Reich
  • Collage (Duo-Collage)
  • Gramsci Monument
  • Robert Walser Kiosk
  • Kurt Schwitters Platform
  • Kurt Schwitters Platform
Free
Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
Contents
PublisherYale University Press
Free
Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
Acknowledgments
PublisherYale University Press
Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
The primary achievement of Kurt Schwitters’s art, the critic Walter Mehring wrote in an August 1919 review, was to utilize “objects themselves to achieve an objectless pictorial whole...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.1-15
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.1

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
How does one make art in, and from, and of, revolution? To ask this set of questions is to probe the fundamental substance of avant-garde aesthetics...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.17-73
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.2

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
Arguably no element was more central to Merz than language. From the infinitely varied textual scraps filling his collages, to the semantic gymnastics...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.75-119
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.3

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
This chapter takes as its subject what is undoubtedly Schwitters’s most significant, and significantly discussed, work: the Merzbau. Destroyed in a British bombing raid in October 1943...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.121-161
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.4

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
In 1931, around the time he began to develop the Merzbau as an integrated environment and in the same year he first publicized the Cathedral of Erotic Misery in “Me and My Goals,” Schwitters completed his plywood assemblage...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.163-193
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.5

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
n October 2010, as my thinking about this book was in its earliest stages, Houston’s Menil Collection opened the exhibition Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage. Including roughly one hundred of the artist’s works...
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.195-201
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00317.6

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Free
Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
Index
PublisherYale University Press
Free
Description: Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
Photo Credits
PublisherYale University Press
Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile
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