Schwitters is my Atelierista

-from a couple of years ago. Still in Kindergarten, still looking to Schwitters.

Kindergarten Merzbau

By Aaron Senitt, 2014

The Original Merzbau

In one popular account describing the activities of artist Kurt Schwitters working in Hannover, Germany during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, he used lines of string to connect the initial sculptural assemblages, grottoes and totems that would become his first “Merzbau”. The story continues as Schwitters replaced the string with wire, and then further built upon the wire using plaster and wood to create a solid, organic, inhabitable form located within the house he lived in. From these initial forms grew his first Merzbau[i], a highly personal, sculptural space that was a central preoccupation for most of Schwitters’ career. This story of artistic formation serves as an analogy as I draw my own strings between the work of Kurt Schwitters and work experienced in my Kindergarten classroom[ii]. Looking through the lens of artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), and in no small measure, the work of forebear Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), our Kindergarten classroom becomes a sort of Merzbau; a site for multiple modes of creation and a place for those of us willing to see the plasticity of boundaries between disciplines. The materials and activities in our classroom illustrate underlying concerns and priorities; the large cardboard structure that evolved around a sensory table in our classroom last year represents a concrete example of my enduring interests; it was provisional architecture for children playing and emerging as creative individuals. Schwitters is viewed here as the absent pedagogue who shines light onto the artistic concerns of our classrooms; an “invisible atelierista”[iii].

Mr. Merz

Kurt Schwitters worked fluidly across the disciplines of sculpture, design, painting, collage, poetry, prose and performance. Schwitters named the sum total of his activities “Merz”, this invented term functioning as a flexible, phonemic signifier[iv] for an artistic practice that was definitively open ended. In Schwitters’ own words, “Merz is consistency. Merz means creating relationships, preferably between all things in the world” (Luke, 2014. p.21). The Merzbau grew from Schwitters’ activities as a collage artist; he collected bits and pieces from the street and from his friends. He assembled these pieces within the picture frame, composing various bits of paper and wood as a whole into abstract compositions. His collage work was a direct forum to pursue his aesthetic preoccupations related to materials as well as pictorial space…how does the frame contain an image? Schwitters’ collage work evolved far beyond the picture frame into real space when he began working within his house on small totemic assemblages, covering them with plaster and expanding them across many rooms to form “a big sculpture, in which you could walk as in a cubist picture”. (Luke. p. 93 ). The Merzbau in Hannover was destroyed during Allied bombing in 1943 and various descriptions of this lost treasure overlap to defy a precise account. How many rooms did it occupy exactly? Did Schwitters actually cut holes in the floors and ceilings to allow the sculpture to interpenetrate his house? Setting aside precise floor plans, there is enough documentation of the original Merzbau[v] existing that we are able to sense the embodied vision of space that Schwitters created. 

Space for Growth

Through the Merzbau, Schwitters sought to explore various relationships. He constructed architectural space bringing dynamic interplay between light, space, and materials, and between the artist and select visitors viewing it. Our approach to space in our classroom is fluid and constantly changing. We rearrange furniture and build provisional play spaces, limited only by the monthly visitations of the Health and Safety inspector, and our imagination. Ernst Schwitters (Webster, 2007) describes how his father initiated his Merzbau with “…free-standing works [that] suddenly ‘grew’ together...” (p.9). In the past I have seen classrooms and hallways that I considered accidental “Merzbau”. Inadvertent detritus filled unused corners of school, taking over spaces with piles and shards of cardboard as evidence of creative ventures. But our Kindergarten Merzbau seemed different, it was central to our room and intentional, it evolved and grew, it was an activated and dynamic space. As the children’s activities grew more and more concentrated within and around the sensory table construction, alterations and additions were made in direct response to the observations made of children’s response to the space…”I think we need a wall here”, ”what will happen if we add a pipe to pour into here?” The sides were clad in cardboard to create small rooms and some decisions were made based upon safety (we’ll need a window here for visibility, another door at the end for flow). A few children suggested alterations (“bigger, make it bigger!”). After two students rose to the challenge of drawing diagrams for an apparatus used for pouring wood pellets into, I reproduced their drawings of additions as faithfully as possible with plastic pipes and tape. As the children played within and around the growing construction, a true Kindergarten Merzbau[vi] was formed. It was a space that was simultaneously interior and exterior; a building inside a building.

One Lays Pencil and Ruler Aside

Our classroom functions as a workshop. To accommodate as wide a range of interests as possible we stock standard Kindergarten art tools and materials such as paper, pipe cleaners, paint and paper but in addition we have tools such as hand drills, saws and hammers. We also stock materials less familiar to the Kindergarten room such as off-cuts of plumbing pipe, scraps of lumber, large sheets of cardboard and various cast away items. For connecting various pieces we make sure that we have effective materials such as plastic cable ties, construction grade tape, as well as nails and screws. Through our tools and materials it becomes “a place of trial building and development and thus of growth and change” (Malet, 1981, p.67). We work to maintain the essential balance necessary in Early Childhood Education between the expected routines and “…the anarchy of the workshop…” (Malet, p. 69). Wassili Luckhardt, a contemporary of Mies van der Rohe, encouraged architects of the day to put down their typical tools of the trade in order to find inspiration in the “accidental forms” that resulted from more malleable hands-on materials such as clay. (Mindrup, 2008, p.35). Though it is a cliché to recall the Proustian[vii] smell of a box freshly open crayons, there is truth to the notion that our deepest understanding of the world is sensual. Schwitters initially used materials such as scraps of wood and paper as a specific rebuff to the orthodox materials of the day (such as oil paint, canvas and brush), materials that he saw to be freighted with cultural baggage. He eventually realized however that all materials hold certain values and the materials he had found and gathered like a magpie had rich sensual and associative qualities such as texture and smell.

The Look and Feel of Kindergarten

Elementary schools have had a unique and enduring appearance; from the “school art” (Efland, 1976) that lines the walls to the colourful borders that frame the bulletin boards, our common notions of what elementary schools look like are still largely confirmed[viii]. Our kindergarten Merzbau was an accretion of spaces to play in, underneath and around (climbing on top was sadly discouraged). It was a sensory space, and a social space. Perplexing, but immediately engaging to visitors who entered our classroom; it did not follow the arrangements and appearances that configure many contemporary Kindergarten rooms. We built collaboratively, guided by Tom Bedard’s “dimensions for building in and around the sensory table” and “axioms for sensorimotor play”[ix], our construction was quickly established as an ongoing centre for children in the classroom (it stood for approximately 2 months), layered and overlapped with various additions, alterations and eventually, children’s drawings. Our Merzbau’s strength of purpose and appropriateness was apparent in the interactions between students and the space, and amongst one another; social, emotional and physical needs of the children were met through playing and working in the room. While inadvertently a challenge to the prevailing aesthetic codes of primary school, it gave them a place to feel safe, negotiate with one another, and be industrious - important values to foster in any classroom. Schwitters’ Merzbau is largely seen as his “Gesamkunstwerk”, or total work of art; our Merzbau was simultaneously an installation, performance and activity centre, a canvas for drawing, a provocation and a monument to remind us of the possibilities of the classroom.

Models of the World

Architects produce models for various purposes, models to instruct us, generative models that our imagination may inhabit, and models to replicate existing forms. During this project we looked at a series of reproduced images of building models, primarily early Modernist architecture based on modular construction (Mindrup, 2008). These images encouraged rich discussion with students, and as they imagined themselves inhabiting the various structures it also clearly influenced some of their own exquisite creations. Schwitters also made small sculptures, some of which have been studied as though they were architectural models (Mindrup, 2008). But what was his intention? Clearly these constructions were not created as working models to be copied directly, nor were they precise models of buildings that already existed. Schwitters indicated that the creation of these smaller constructions was a kind of childlike play, a “bauspiel” or building play. These smaller constructions suggest ways of working and looking, and I imagine Schwitters’ own experience in a Froebelian Kindergarten is revealed in some way through his work. As Kindergarten teachers, we model behaviour, we model language use, and we model skills to be developed. Children create their own models of the world as they understand it, using the various modes of expression that are available to them. In the same way that children’s drawings and constructions are attractive for the economy of means that they use; (a handful of pencils becomes a castle, two circles eyes, and so on), models represent concepts that are larger both conceptually and physically. In effect the “model is a bridge from the imagination to the materially grown up form” (Mindrup, p. 48), and in this case, perhaps back again.

Past Present

Norman Brosterman (1997) has notably outlined a revelatory connection between Kindergarten experiences of early 20th century artists and architects, and the formation of modernist abstract practice. Gwendolen Webster (2007) reminds us that the work Schwitters was engaged with over the course of his life has remained pertinent for artists and historians. While our Merzbau was never conceived of as an exercise in teaching art history, it became a lesson that was implicit and embodied in experience. In retrospect, it would have been superb to ask our ever receptive three, four and five year olds to articulate words such as “Schwitters”, “Froebel” and “Merzbau”, and undoubtedly, the words would have acquired unforeseen meanings as they were filtered through those unique brains, however in this event I allowed the ideas that I found so captivating to remain as conceptual and material scaffold for Kindergarten play. I called it our “setup”, and did not in fact bring the term Merzbau” to the children. Brosterman (1997) reminds us that “Kindergarten was play, and a good Kindergartener [teacher] made certain her little sprouts never thought otherwise-the theoretical underpinnings of the education were kept from children just as they are in any classroom situation.”. It is my feeling that a deeply reciprocal connection between contemporary Kindergarten practice and key examples of visual art, language, sculpture and architecture remains largely untapped (or perhaps undocumented). I am working to redirect the luminosity of Schwitters’ creative approaches forward into the visual and language arts of my Kindergarten classroom, while at the same time, hoping to extrapolate from that process a set of my own axioms that may be extended and applied toward the work of other artists. This work begins as always with questions: What does it mean to “invite” Schwitters to our classroom as an “invisible atelierista”? How exactly does the work of historical artistic predecessors (and contemporary artists alike) find footing in our classrooms? The seed planted long ago in the first Kindergartens may provide a guiding example.

Froebel, Schwitters, Crystalline Metaphors

As a young scholar, Friedrich Froebel spent an extended period of time studying crystals, and found through his analysis of geometric forms an apt metaphor and model for growth in general. He was able to confirm that the minute inner structures within crystals are mirrored by the outside appearance of the same mineral forms that we see and hold. Froebel extended this concept of inner and outer unity to all living things, and his description of a unified relationship between “the parts and the whole” was instrumental as he developed the philosophies that became the first Kindergarten (Brosterman, 1997). I see wide implications for this notion of the “parts and the whole” applied within Kindergarten today ranging from art, language, mathematics and social relationships; the impressively broad artistic oeuvre of Kurt Schwitters offers a wellspring of material that I will continue to explore in future work. Schwitters’ Merzbau was a kind of crystal, an initial form that grew larger yet retained that original kernel of form as it acquired more and more faceted parts. Our own Merzbau followed the same trajectory as well, the sensory tables remaining the core form and function of our growing construction. I have found a viable model for thought and growth within the work of Schwitters; my own metaphor for a unified approach to Kindergarten.

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Endnotes

[i] In all, there were three successive Merzbauten (pl) built over the course of Schwitters’ life.

[ii] The “Kindergarten Merzbau” project is a project that I initiated, and then created collaboratively. It is important to note that my classroom is a working space with Junior and Senior Kindergarten children that I share with Cyndy Washington, an Early Childhood Educator I teach with, we are joined as well as throughout the year, by numerous others such as Educational Assistants, and high school and university students.

[iii] Atelierista. A teaching role at the core of the Italian Reggio Emilia approach, this is a position that extends the art teacher’s activities beyond supplying materials and demonstrating techniques. The Atelierista is a researcher with “sensitive antennae for contemporary issues” (Edwards, Gandini, & Foreman, 2012), bringing a unique perspective to school, while thoughtfully accompanying children and adults in the creative processes of learning together.

[iv] Merzbau: Merz “house” Merzbauten: plural of Merzbau; Merzbild: mixed media collage; Merzarchitektur: sculptural models for architecture; Merzbühne: Merz theatre; Merzgebiete: Merz “territories”; Merz-Säule: Merz column (see Luke 2014, index)

[v] While Schwitters created a successive Merzbau each time he was driven into exile first in Sweden, then in England, his original Merzbau is arguably the most significant not only on account of the degree of documentation that exists of it, but for its level of complexity and accomplishment.

[vi] I sometimes referred (tongue in cheek) to the construction as our “sensory overload” table.

[vii] The term, a “Proustian” recollection refers to author Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who described the childhood recollections brought on by the exquisite taste and smell of a small cake, a Madeleine.  

[viii] Patricia Tarr (2001) aptly describes our vision of a typical elementary school classroom. To be fair, teachers who integrate a Reggio Emilia approach into their work, and those hoping to encourage an element of self regulation in children, have also made efforts to challenge prevalent notions of what a Kindergarten classroom might look like by reducing visual distractions and providing only what is seen as essential materials. I embrace this in principle fully, and in practice as much as I can bear though I still resist what I may unfairly refer to as “the yoga studio” aesthetic. Thus, we have “Kindergarten Merzbau”!

[ix] Tom Bedard is an Early Childhood Educator who maintains a blog that is rich with observant documentation of children at play titled “Sand and Water Tables”, http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/

References

Bedard, Tom. (2014). Dimensions for building in and around the sensory table”,“Axioms for

sensorimotor play”. Retrieved from http://tomsensori.blogspot.ca/

Brosterman, Norman. (1997). Inventing Kindergarten. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Edwards, Carolyn, Gandini, Lella, & Forman, George (Eds.). (2012). The Hundred Languages of
  Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. 

Efland, Arthur. (1976). “The School Art Style: A Functional Analysis,” Studies in Art
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Gamard, Elizabeth Burns. (2000). Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery.
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Luke, Megan. (2014). Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile. Chicago: University of Chicago
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Malet, Marian (1981). Hans Arp and the Aesthetics of the Workshop. In R. Sheppard (Ed.),
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Richter, Hans. (1965). Dada: Art and Anti-Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

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Webster, Gwendolen. (2007). Kurt Schwitters Merzbau. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from
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