Our project, summary of the Merzbarn story (1947-1965)
It is not such a well-known fact that the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters spent the last years
of his life in Ambleside in the English Lake District.
He painted landscapes and portraits for a living. But, more remarkably, he also fathered another Merzbau there.
He had been granted the use of a barn in the middle of the countryside and his wish was to transmogrify this barn
in its entirety into a work of art – a Merzbarn.
It was to be his unfinished swan song. During the last year of his life he worked on it as hard as his health would
permit but he could not complete his enterprise. He had made substantial progress on a single wall and when he
left the barn was largely filled with his provisional setting out of the whole 3-dimensional construction.
After Schwitters’ death (1948) the wall slowly sank into dereliction and the provisional construction was
removed, though some evidence remains.
By 1965 the completed section was still largely intact. (Fred Brookes, 2009)
It was only a superhuman effort on the part of the barn’s owner, Harry Pierce, which managed to save as work
of art. Ultimately he donated the wall to the Department of Fine Art of Newcastle University. Richard Hamilton
and
the Head of the Department at that time, Kenneth Rowntree, played a major decision-making role in the project of the removal, transport
and restoration of the wall.
A low loader lorry was sent to collect the residuum of the wall. It had been a good many years since Elterwater had been a focal point of such attention. The removal of the wall
was a slow and expensive operation as the wall had to be removed intact as far as was possible.
The journey of 193 km (120 miles) took two days.
At long last the wall was placed in the Hatton Gallery at the University of Newcastle but the erstwhile flurry of attention it received there soon dwindled.
The wall at last now occupies its rightful place as a properly displayed museum exhibit.
The wall at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, 2008
