Walk like a Kurt Schwitters: Wetherlam, Little Langdale & Tilberthwaite
Aim
The German artist Kurt Schwitters is best known for his collage work, and his association with the constructivist and dadaist movements. Less well known are his landscape paintings, and the emphasis he placed upon close observation of nature during the artistic process. This latter approach characterised the work he produced while living near Ambleside during the Second World War. This route comprises an experiment which compares and contrasts the pros and cons of each approach during two different excursions, to encourage participants to reflect upon their comparative potential for rethinking our relationship to the landscape / broader environmental issues.
Background
Kurt Schwitters (1887 to 1948) was a German modernist artist best known for his Merz works - collages and assemblages -created using found and scrap materials (see the image on the LHS). Yet, while in exile in the Lake District during the second world war, he began painting portraits and landscapes which were far more traditional in nature than the work for which he was renowned. An example of this work, ‘River Landscape 1945’ is provided below, with a photographic reproduction of this scene, shot from the A593 between Clappersgate and Skelwith Bridge, providing the profile picture for this experiment. So how did an artist, associated with avant garde movements such as constructivism and dadaism, end up creating work in this far more traditional (dare I say Romantic) vein (and find himself in the Lake District doing so)?
On the one hand, Schwitters’ change of direction was a consequence of circumstance, with sales of landscape and portrait paintings providing a key source of income at this time of exile. Yet Schwitters had also long expounded upon the importance of close observation of nature, and it was in these landscape paintings where this belief found particular expression, as he sought to achieve as close replicas as possible of the colour, tone and the shape of the scenery surrounding his adopted home. Indeed, Schwitters’ association with movements such as Dada had not always been straightforward at the best of times, tinged as they were by other artists’ suspicions of his associated with Der Sturm and Expressionism. According to the memoires of Raoul Hausmann, Schwitters asked to join Berlin Dada either in late 1918 or early 1919, only for Richard Huelsenbeck to reject the application because of what the dadaists saw as Schwitters's romanticism and obsession with aesthetics. Famously, Huelsenbeck was reputed to have described Schwitters as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution', a quote which provides the context for the below image ‘Sheep above the valley of Little Langdale’.
This experiment takes these two contrasting approaches of Schwitters as its starting point, in inviting participants to undertake not just one experiment up Wetherlam or your own choice of other Schwitters landscape, but two! (and ideally undertaken in close succession). During one of these routes, the aim is to observe the natural surroundings as closely as possible, and to try to capture this in images and words in such a way as to interpose the human perspective as little as possible. The second experiment involves producing collage works in response to found objects and language while undertaking the route. The aim, as above, is to assess which approach yields more interesting conclusions about our relationship to the landscape / environment of which we are a part.
Route Instructions
Long route
Route: very difficult, (16 miles and 2,700 feet of ascent, 8 miles of this by bike). This route starts at Clappersgate, where there is parking just off the A593 beside the River Brathay. The aim of the route is to travel the entirety of the view in the Schwitters painting, the first and last 4 miles of which are along the road (by bike or car). The terrain on the ascent and parts of the descent of this route are rough, occasionally pathless and challenging! Hands will be required for the final ascent and descent towards the summit over rough rocky ground.
Starting point: a layby car park just across the River Brathay at Clappersgate.
Accessible alternative: it’s perfectly possible to drive the first and last four miles of this route; the approach track from Little Langdale towards the ascent to Wetherlam is also along a track, and will be accessible to those in wheelchairs which can deal with unsealed surfaces. These are the parts of the route during which the Schwitters painting ‘view’ is more prominent.
My own writing and photography
Sheep above the valley of Little Langdale
(after Kurt Schwitters, the the ‘Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution’)
Walk like a Kurt Schwitters
i.
ii.
This poem is a form of self-testing.
SARS Cov2 Anti-gen rapid
Himalayan mountain
wear – a private matter. A bazaar
requiring extreme caution.
A narrow route with severe bends.
Winter conditions can be
dangerous. Please drive slowly.
iii.
No responsibility is accepted for
our Lakeland gardens.
To design. To build. To maintain.
Dear Matthew.
Please stop this.
We recycled the mountain.
It was oh so scrummy.
Deliciously moist.
Stadium. Confetti. Pigment.
iv.
All diverted traffic:
turn right for bar meals.
Left for hotel and restaurant.
An express worldwide delivery
of beer. Unsuitable for caravans.
v.
The boy in the car’s t shirt
reads I love Pakistan.
Slightly further on:
no parking. No turning.
This is private farmland.
This site is a disused quarry
and mine. This route is unfit
for cars.
The Yorkshire Ramblers Club
is a scheduled ancient monument.
Stay on the safe side of any barrier.
vi.
Danger danger danger.
Wildlife conservation and
livestock nearby. There is a chance
of rockfall. There are unprotected
sheer drops. Deep water is present.
No camping. No fires. No litter.
The national trust?
British patents and chocolate brownies.
Two pounds a piece.
Merz Wetherlam
All the things I didn’t know are as they are
i.
Crisp autumn. 7.22am.
8 degrees. Tilberthwaite.
A gentle north-east breeze.
The underside of the leaves
of a mountain ash. Rowan.
The sun has risen. Alighting
upon the eastern facing crags.
Quarry slag tumbles over where
it has already fallen.
A yellow mushroom.
For identification. Later.
Sycamore seeds / samara / keys.
Tar spot. A localized seasonal disease.
ii.
A wall contours the crest of the ridgeline.
A backlit oak tree grows from the cleft lip
of the quarry (dripping with ore).
The texture of petrified moss
against the contrail of an aeroplane
across a cobalt sky.
The preposition of a speckled quarter moon.
iii.
Why is there no specific word
for the sound of falling river?
Do sheep live long enough for menopause?
What’s the difference between a fern and bracken?
The chronic hangover of insomnia.
My early morning shadow dwarfs my self.
Bog oils. Rhizomes. Lenticular cloud forms.
A sighting. If I see nobody does this mean
I’ve passed unseen?
iv.
Or from Steel Edge.
A metallic glacial river.
A mountain skyline strangely free of fells.
Heysham, hovering.
A raven tumbling upside down in air.
The whoosh of fighter jet that passes
close beneath my toes.
All this and that
and that I didn’t know.
Strom: Der Sturm
