KNUD MERRILD (1894-1954)

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

In 1922, Merrild’s artwork was exhibited for the first time in the United States at the Belmaison Gallery in New York City. Nearly ten years after the monumental 1913 Armory Show’s display of European Cubism and Futurism for the first time in the United States, Merrild’s modernist painting was embraced as an innovative, refreshing departure from conventional representational art.

Throughout his career as an artist, Merrild did not conform to one stylistic genre, but instead fluidly transcended from one style to the next, often overlapping techniques to create something new. Despite his experimentation with different styles, a constant inspiration for Merrild was his desire to translate the idea of flux -constant change- into pictorial painting. This pursuit, first realized by Merrild in 1909, became a life-long obsession and finally materialized to his satisfaction in 1942, when he invented flux painting.

Merrild’s earliest works from the 1920’s resemble a breed of Cubism influenced by the severe lines of Art Deco. By the late 1920’s and into the early 1930’s, Merrild produced drawings and paintings in the geometric vein, such as his watercolor on paper Composition of 4’s (c. 1935). In form, the overlapping planes created through repetition of lines and basic shapes in Composition of 4’s are reminiscent of Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866 -1944) early geometric, abstract oil paintings in the Bauhaus. It also recalls an earlier, Cubist painting by Merrild, To Love is to Suffer (c. 1922) which uses the same half-colored leaves and flowers as seen in Composition of 4’s for the print design on the woman’s blouse. These distinct leaves appear again as the focal point in Four Leaves (1934). The repetition of half-colored forms in his artwork reflects Merrild’s interest in the Taoist symbols of Yin and Yang.

Around 1930, Merrild gained maturity as an artist and began creating assemblages and collages, combining abstracted forms of painted metal and wood. Reflecting a Cubist heritage with angular shapes and bold colors, these Constructivist experiments utilize carved surfaces and attached fixtures, resembling the work of Dadaists Jean Arp (1886-1966) and Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). Referring to this phase of wood constructions, Merrild said, In regarding space as a medium, I surround it by restricted areas of varied proportions; penetrate it at different angles and depths with shapes and planes, creating movement and rhythm, and in addition use various materials and colors in a related harmony to the whole.

One of Merrild’s most famous assemblages, Aesthetic Function in Space (1928-1933), combines multiple materials in rich colors such as brown, mustard, and deep green. The central, asymmetrical division of this composition of light and dark, big and small, and foreground and background evoke the persistent Yin and Yang motif in his artwork. Like Aesthetic Function in Space, Primaries (1938) is an assemblage of mixed cut-outs of wood painted in variations of the primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. Merrild’s minimalist relief constructions such as Veritas (1933) and Relief Construction (1933) resemble reliefs produced by Bauhaus master Joost Schmidt (1893-1948).

Merrild invented flux painting in 1942, when he put himself hard to the task. Merrild’s motivation for his progressive flux technique lies in his interest in metaphysics and the ancient writings of Lao Tse and Heraclitus, who wrote that change is the fundamental law of reality. According to his 1952 Statement on Flux Painting, Merrild writes, Everything seems to depend on the whim or law of chance, accidental judgment by accidental authority and forced cause... To reflect this I attempt a personal intuitive expression where ‘laws’ of aesthetic evaluation become meaningless. Therefore, I do not subscribe to any former concepts... Merrild’s flux experimentations demonstrate his concerted interest in the fluidity of organic, unintentional forms such as the patterns of tree bark or the wrinkles of an elephant’s skin.

Merrild’s flux paintings are often compared to his contemporary Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings because of their shared rejection of traditional painting methods by pouring paint onto a canvas. However, Merrild’s flux paintings are distinct from Pollock’s. Rather than slingling paint onto the canvas, Merrild produced marbelized figures on easel-scale canvases from the wavy undulations of oil on water. Using housepainters’ tools and enamels, Merrild’s flux method involved

pouring paint onto a moistened canvas while manipulating the motion of the canvas to create different shapes. Even though Merrild’s invention of flux predates Pollock’s first drip paintings by five years, Pollock is attributed to the development of this technique, perhaps as result of the minute possibilities for publicity in Los Angeles compared to New York.

For Merrild, flux paintings existed as a final culmination of his desire to illuminate the subconscious through randomness and anti-esthetic values. After he invented flux painting in 1942, Merrild’s paintings achieved great national recognition with an increased number of exhibitions outside of California. During his lifetime, abstract art was not hugely popular in Los Angeles possibly because of its inaccessibility to the public as an over-intellectualized artistic endeavor. However, in 2005, as a public indicator of his brilliance as an artist, Merrild’s work was displayed alongside work of the great abstract surrealists such as Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), and Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) in the Surrealism USA exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York City.   

EDUCATION

1909-1912 Art and Technical School, Stege, Denmark
1914-1917 Arts and Crafts School, Copenhagen, Denmark
1917-1918 Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1924 Numerous from Los Angeles Associations
1935 Merit Award, Transigram Sound Corporation, Hollywood, California, First Annual Exhibit of Painting and Sculpture

COLLECTIONS

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
Copenhagen Arts and Crafts Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles Permanent Collection, Pomona, California
Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York
Oakland Museum, Oakland, California
Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, California
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Private Collection of Louise and Walter Arsenberg
Private Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Leslie M. Maitland

CHRONOLOGY

1894 Born on island of Jutland, Denmark
1908 Begins career as a house painter
1912 Starts professional art training in Copenhagen at the Arts and Crafts School
1916 Exhibits for the first time at the annual Danish Royal Academy’s Fall Salon
1917-8 Attends Denmark’s Royal Academy of Art
1918 Founds Avendt Kunst
1919 Wins Scandinavian backstroke championship
1921 Moves to the United States
1923 Settles in Los Angeles
1938 Publishes novel, A Poet and Two Painters: A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence
1956 Dies in Copenhagen, Denmark

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Dailey, Victoria, et al. LA’s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography. Los Angeles: Balcony Press, 2003.
2. Dailey, Victoria. Knud Merrild: Works from the 1930’s + 1940’s. Los Angeles: Steve Turner Gallery, 1991.
3. Fiedler, Jeannine, ed. Bauhaus. Cologne: Könemann, 2000.
4. Karlstrom, Paul J. Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1990.
5. Knud Merrild: 1894-1954. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Exhibition Catalog. Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, 1965.
6. Levin, Gail. Themes and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde, 1912-1950. Dayton Art Institute, 1992.