Kurt Schwitters and Schwittersation
Collage has been my primary medium for 25 years. I’ve taught the history of collage with a PowerPoint of early collage artists including Kurt Schwitters. When I saw his 1920 painting, Ja Was, Bild?, at London's Tate Museum in 2012, I was moved to tears. The colors, the cardboard, the composition. I felt seen! A print of his painting has been in my studio ever since.
My large square “Schwittersation” is based on his even larger rectangular work. In the early stages of this painting, I was teaching a watercolor class, highlighting J.M.W. Turner and was influenced by his Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory): The Morning after the Deluge. So, my Schwitters got a glowing halo which helped tie the composition together. The large piece in the upper center is from Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries showing words that rhyme with “-ation” (thus, the title). My 91 year old mother contributed a grocery list, and there are pieces from a 2001 Metropolitan Art Museum Calendar with photos of the Unicorn Tapestries. I also used hand-painted tissue and Citri-solv papers (altered National Geographic pages), punched cardstock, mulberry papers, doilies, crackle medium, oil pastels and and graphite. Layers of history make collage exciting.
