Das Undbild 1919
Schwitters was a German artist linked to Cubism, German Expressionism and for a small time, Dadaism. Creating work for most of the first half of the 20th century up until his death in 1948, I found Schwitters collages interesting and influential.
Although his source material is totally different to mine, in a way it wasn’t it just used the equivalent materials from his lifetime, newspaper cuttings, materials available to him and as below, pieces from games.
Merz Picture 46A. The Skittle Picture 1921
I love Schwitters nonsensicalness, he wrote Dada poetry, one of which is just two minutes of him pretty much making funny noises. Although being serious in his world, is also ridiculous. His work was attacking the bourgeoisie and philistinism by not being obsessed with aesthetics and creating his collages with any conceivable material that he considered equal to paint.
Untitled (This is to Certify That) 1942
Schwitters invented Merz A type of 3D collage which he used any material from paper to found objects. He really concentrated on this after being rejected from Berlin’s Dada scene.
Merzbau Hanover 1933
As well as creating collages, he also made several building interiors into living collages, the best known was the Merzbau in Hanover. A five/ six bedroom family home that took Schwitters over ten years to complete the first room then he started to spread to other areas of the house. He carried on working on the house until he fled Germany in 1937. The final amount of the house covered was two of his parents rooms on the ground floor, the adjoining balcony, space below the balcony, one or two rooms of the attic and the cellar. Unfortunately it was destroyed in an air raid in 1943.
Merzbau Hanover 1933
I love this house and the idea of being fully immersed in your own work, inside a collage. These pictures make me think of something out of a Tim Burton film or a Neil Gaiman book and is almost like being inside a fantasy world. I would love to be able to create something similar to this, but unfortunately I do not have the time, resources or property to do it!
Merz Barn, Cylinder Farm, Elterwater 1947
After fleeing Germany to Norway, Schwitters eventually ended up in England and becoming a huge influence on many artistic household names, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and more recently Damien Hurst. He stated that the war had taught him ‘Things were in terrible turmoil….everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz.’
In 1945 he moved to the Lake District and created his last great sculpture and installation – the Merzbarn. It was a continuation of the Hanover Merzbau that carried on until his death.
These are three sections of a fantasy collage I have made. The background is a found item of already painted board that I came across in the woodwork rooms. The brightly coloured swirls of what I think is printing ink reminded me of my own work and the backgrounds I had created with oil paints on board with one of my collages from last year.
I found these images mostly in Vogue And Harper’s Bazaar From full blown fashion shoots and from adverts. The original imagery was polished and perfected, I have changed it to be a bit choppy and almost like animation so the images are far from their original context.
I prefer this work in sections rather than as a whole piece and I am considering cutting up the board or reproducing sections of it either as photographs or as images printed onto canvas.
Richard Hamilton was an English artist known as the ‘daddy of Pop Art’. Creating one of the first widely recognised pieces of Pop Art,
Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes so Appealing? (1956). A collage made from all the mod cons and must haves of the time.
He was reflecting the influx of consumerism that had come to Britain from the States, how the country was changing.
His works were very accurate at documenting the economic, social and political status of the times they were created in. He also mangages to show his sense of humour through his work and his Britishness shines through, differentiating him from the American Pop Artists, either with his dry humour or his british grittiness.
Portrait of Hugh Gaskil As A Famous Monster of Filmland (1964) is oil and collage on photograph. This is one of his more political works, turning a politician of the 1960s into a grotesque creation. Hamilton himself was very politically active, taking part in political rally’s and protests, even being arrested for his involvement.
This piece reflects Hamilton’s disagreement and dissatisfaction at Labour and inparticular Gaskil’s policies.
Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes so Appealing? (1992) is an updated version of his 1956 work. This piece was showing how much or how little the world had changed since the original was made, with updated technolgy and the changing role of the man and woman in the home. In this version the woman is strong while the man is slumped over the computer not showing the physical prowess he had in the 1950s.
Hamilton’s work interested me so much as I find his techniques, processes and source material influential to those which I like to use. I love how his collages have come to represent certain eras of time so accurately and feel S though they can be read like a text book.
His source material of contemporary fashions, desires and stereotypes and also in much of his work, a huge celebrity influence really appeals to me. I feel a similarity to my own work in technique and source material while also being a million miles apart from each other.
Swingeing London 67 f
Using another face I had used the eyes from, I placed it over my original collage and it changed the image again. I quite like the result of this one it fits nicely over the top.
I’m growing to really like the effect photocopying my work creates. I enlarged it from A4 to A3 and made a colour copy, I hadn’t attached the face permanently so I then attached it to a black and white copy and made a colour photocopy of that and then a black and white one.
I don’t really like the colour and black and white copy but I think either the full colour or the full black and white copy are most impressive particularly the black and white one. Again I am happy with the final image but not with the finish that photocopying provides.
I photocopied and enlarged the original collage to a black and white A3 copy then copied it another four times, zooming by 100% each time. I made two copies of each image then used acrylic paint to highlight certain areas of one copy of each image. I used the same colours on each image but rearranged where I placed the colours, then displayed the images along with the black and white copies.
I think they look quite good together as a whole piece rather than as eight seperate images, so I will take a better photograph than this and have them all aligned properly so I can reproduce the whole image. I like how the image has become more and more grainy as I photocopied each photocopy, so getting further and further away from the original magazine image, reminding me of the notion of the original that I looked at last year.
