Acknowledgments

Bader, Graham

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Acknowledgments

Graham Bader

Poisoned Abstraction: Kurt Schwitters between Revolution and Exile

Acknowledgments

Author

Graham Bader

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22631

Acknowledgments

Without the nails and glue by which they became Merz, Kurt Schwitters’s bits would have remained a formless selection of detritus; so too this book has come together only through the binding support of numerous friends, colleagues, and institutions. In these few paragraphs, I can only begin to offer the thanks that are due.

My work on Poisoned Abstraction began shortly after I began teaching at Rice University, which has been unstinting in its research support. In particular, I am grateful to the Humanities Research Center for a Faculty Teaching-Release Fellowship that helped initiate the project, to the Department of Art History and the Office of the Dean of Humanities for ongoing research assistance, and to the Creative Ventures Scholarly and Creative Works Fund and the Department of Art History’s Faculty Subvention Fund (enabled by the generosity of the Brown Foundation) for help with book illustration expenses.

A fellowship award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enabled multiple stays in Berlin, where I began my research and am now writing these acknowledgments. In its support of families and commitment to long-term academic exchange, the Humboldt Foundation has established a model for promoting scholarship from which I feel honored to have benefitted.

For conversation that impacted the book’s arguments and enriched its development, I’m grateful to David Breslin, Hal Foster, Shirine Hamadeh, Josef Helfenstein, Arturo Herrera, John Hopkins, Jordan Kantor, Ines Katenhusen, Sean Keller, Karl Kilian, Jennie King, Michelle Kuo, Rona Marech, Christine Mehring, Benjamin Paul, Jeffrey Saletnik, Michael Schreyach, Joyce Tsai, Sarah Whiting, Gregory Williams, Ron Witte, and Andrés Zervigón. I’m especially thankful to those friends who read the manuscript in part or in whole: Susan Bielstein, Harry Cooper, Joshua Shannon, and Gwendolen Webster; their ideas and knowledge mark each page. And I am forever indebted to Yve-Alain Bois, without whose model, friendship, and support this book would surely not exist.

My colleagues at Rice and friends in the broader university community have helped to create an ideal intellectual and institutional home. In particular, I feel blessed to know and to work with Leo Costello, Luis Duno-Gottberg, Sarah Ellenzweig, Reto Geiser, Sarah Kielt Costello, Lisa Lapinski, Fabiola López-Durán, Ussama Makdisi, Scott McGill, Noëmi Mollet, Carlos Pelayo Martínez, Elora Shehabuddin, John Sparagana, and Alison Weaver. Gordon Hughes, with whom I joined the Rice faculty in 2008, has infinitely enriched my time at the university, both personally and intellectually. Kathleen Canning has been a model Dean of Humanities; and Chelsey Morell Denny, Anna Julia, Irene Kwan, and Kelley Vernon—all of whom have helped with this book at different stages—make the Department of Art History a wonderful place to return each fall. I’m also grateful for the questions, conversation, and help of my students, who have impacted each of the following chapters. In particular, I thank Philip Kelleher for his helpful comments on an early chapter draft, Karine Raynor for her archival digging, and Patricia Bacaloa, Stephen Westich, and Yuri Yoshida for their essential research assistance.

Around the corner from Rice, Clare Eliot and Michelle White at the Menil Collection and Alison de Lima Greene at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, have never hesitated to open their collections for research and teaching visits, a generosity that makes the city such an ideal place to be thinking about and looking at art. I’m also grateful for the presence, across town at the University of Houston, of Natilee Harren and Sandra Zalman.

During my time as a Humboldt Fellow in Berlin, I was lucky enough to be affiliated with the Humboldt University’s Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, where I remain forever grateful to Robin Schuldenfrei for her support of my research stay. I must also thank Katja Bernhardt, Horst Bredekamp, Charlotte Klonk, and, more recently, Eva Ehninger for their warm collegiality. The generosity of Caroline Haselmayr, also in Berlin, has allowed Rykestraße to become a true second home.

Parts of this book were presented in public lectures in both the United States and Germany. I am grateful to organizers and audiences at Emory University, Rice University, Indiana University, the University of Chicago, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Clark Art Institute, and the annual conference of the German Studies Association for their questions and conversation. (Carl Caldwell, at Rice, is particularly thanked for sparking my consideration of Merz’s invention through the lens of Germany’s November Revolution.) Integrated excerpts from chapter one and the conclusion were published in the Journal of Art Historiography in 2019, and a provisional set of thoughts on Schwitters in Artforum in 2011; I thank the editors of both journals for those opportunities.

Numerous museums, libraries, and archives have assisted my research and helped with illustrations for the present book. I will let my footnotes and picture credits do much of the work of offering thanks, but wish to single out here Jürgen Dittmer at Hanover’s Pelikan Archiv; Stefan Behrens and Pamela-Britt Bannehr at the Sprengel Museum Hannover; Stefan Ståhle, Jo Widoff, and Christina Wiklund at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet; Adrian Sudhalter at the Merrill C. Berman Collection; Johannes Rößler at the Stiftung Insel Hombroich; and Isabel Schulz at the Sprengel’s Kurt Schwitters Archive. Isabel—like Gwendolen, whom I’ve already thanked above—is unfailingly generous in her insight into and assistance with all things Schwitters, for which I am truly grateful.

At Yale University Press, Katherine Boller has been an unstinting supporter and ideal steward of this project since our very first conversations about it. Similarly, Raychel Rapazza has been a consummate professional with each step of the book’s progress, and Kate Zanzucchi and Alison Hagge have provided superlative editorial support. It feels like having won the lottery to be able to work with such an exceptional team—including my proofreader, Carolyn Horwitz, and indexer, Cathy Dorsey. And though I’m unable to name them, I thank my anonymous press readers for making each of the book’s pages sharper, stronger, and more nuanced.

As I approach these acknowledgments’ end, let me send a quick shout-out to Mark, Aman, Gloria, Bill, Mike, Mary, Thekla, Eric, Magda, Sandra, Frank, Marike, and Ben—even without last names, you know who you are, and how important your friendships have been as I’ve worked on these pages. The same goes to my family, whose love, particularly in this difficult year, has been sustaining. I can’t wait until we’re able to gather again.

More than anything, I am grateful for the daily presence of Lida—who has filled my life and shaped my thinking over the years in which this book was written—and for the ongoing gift of Leo and Sasha. Sure, the intimacies of family life have gotten a bit out of hand during these months of lockdowns and homeschooling—but I still wouldn’t have it any other way.

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