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The collages of Kurt Schwitters : tradition and innovation / Dorothea Dietrich.

By: Dietrich, Dorothea.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: Cambridge. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1993Description: xvi, 240 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm. + hbk.ISBN: 0521419360.Subject(s): Schwitters, Kurt, 1887-1948 | Artists -- Germany -- BiographyDDC classification: 709.2 SCH
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Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 709.2 SCH (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00193827
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

At the end of World War I, the German artist Kurt Schwitters dramatically broke with dominant artistic traditions by adopting collage as the primary medium for his literary and visual production. In The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation, Dorothea Dietrich demonstrates how collages function for the artist. Characterising Schwitters's work as the product of the deep social and political crises of the Weimar Republic, Dietrich challenges the prevalent outlook that twentieth-century art can be reduced to a revolutionary struggle of avant-garde artists against an entrenched artistic tradition. The Collages of Kurt Schwitters argues for a more nuanced view, in which revolutionary art forms are exposed as containing much that is traditional and, indeed, reactionary.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-235) and index.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Introduction
  • 1 Political and cultural chaos and the formation of Merz
  • 2 Art after the war: expressionism and dada
  • 3 Merz and expressionism
  • 4 The invention of a new language
  • 5 Play with chaos: the Aquarelle
  • 6 Political inscription
  • 7 Refashioned traditions
  • 8 The Merzbau or the cathedral of erotic misery
  • 9 The fragment reformed: Schwitters's Merzbau
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography