Layers of Scraps, Fragments, and Hidden Meaning

by Nadya Kelly (MA 2023)

Tucked away in the Prints and Drawings Study Room at the Art Institute of Chicago is a collage that is as much a visual puzzle as it is a historical document.

Kurt Schwitters’ Untitled (Arrival for the Dance), a richly textured collage made during his exile in England from 1941–42, is not on view in the museum’s galleries. Yet for Professor Annie Bourneuf, who teaches in the Art History, Theory, and Criticism department, it’s one of the most mesmerizing pieces in the entire institution.

“I think that many of the most fascinating and thought-provoking works in the museum are not on display in the galleries,” she said. “They're in the Prints and Drawings Study Room, and anyone can make an appointment.”

In her own research, Bourneuf specializes in European art from 1900 to 1945, with a particular focus on early 20th-century German art. Her teaching and research explore the relationship between art, media, and politics, especially during the Weimar Republic, Germany’s democratic government which was established after the end of World War I and ended with the Nazi seizure of power. Schwitters is one of Bourneuf’s favorite artists, both to admire and to talk about in her classes, and she believes his untitled collage is an example of how personal history and politics can intertwine to create an art document rich with meaning.

The collage looks like a patchwork of aged paper scraps—some tinted like old denim, others marked with fragments of English and American text. Look closely and you’ll see a dog framed by the scraps, the surrounding scraps working almost like a halo or spotlight. But the collage layers both conceal and emphasize, drawing the viewer’s eye in and out of the scene. The background image, Arrival at the Dance, is by Franz von Defregger—a 19th-century Austrian artist whose work was once favored by Adolf Hitler. Schwitters, labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis, fled Germany in 1937 and eventually settled in England. It was there he created this collage, turning the painting into a surface for subversion.

“Schwitters is engaging directly with something he deemed toxic,” Bourneuf explained. “This wasn’t just a random backdrop. It was a painting associated with Nazi ideology. By covering much of it up, he was asserting something deeply personal and political.”

Schwitters coined the term Merz—a nonsense word extracted from Kommerzbank, or “commercial bank”—to describe his collage practice. For him, repurposing that syllable became a kind of manifesto. Merz came to represent his belief in transforming everyday materials of life—bus tickets, candy wrappers, torn labels—into something poetic and new.

For Annie Bourneuf, this philosophy is more than historical. It shapes how she teaches. Schwitters’ ability to turn “junk” into form and color has taught her students how to look—really look—at materials and meaning. Seeing his work in person, Bourneuf believes, is essential.

“I think that he thinks about art as a way of transforming things,” Bourneuf reflected, “and making things that he finds beautiful out of what is often not beautiful at all. That's a way of looking at the world that I admire.” ■