The collages of Kurt Schwitters

In The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation, Dorothea Dietrich demonstrates how collages function for the artist. Analyzing specific works, Dietrich delineates in rich detail the survival of tradition within avant-garde innovation. Characterizing Schwitters' work as the product of the deep social and political crises of the Weimar Republic, Dietrich challenges the prevalent view that twentieth-century art can be reduced to a revolutionary struggle of avant-garde artists against an entrenched artistic tradition. The Collages of Kurt Schwitters argues for a more nuanced view in which revolutionary art forms are shown to contain a variety of contradictory elements, both traditional and reactionary.