ABSTRACT
During World War I paper was an important Ersatz substitute for many items in short supply. After the war, economic conditions and other factors made graphic art a popular option for artists. The value of works on paper was tied up with the declining value of the primary object of inflation: paper money. The sense that paper was a material with no material value was cemented by the preponderance of poor-quality papers and the constantly depreciating Paper Mark. This chapter will consider some of the ways these circumstances may have altered the production of art during this period, first by considering preliminary research into works on paper from the collection of the Rifkind Center, taking account of the properties of their paper supports. The author will then look at one artist's very particular response to the visibility of paper in this period, namely Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters's use of found and torn pieces of scrap paper in his Merz drawings and prints makes plain the support's material vulnerabilities. But Schwitters also reveals and revels in the material's affirmative qualities such as paper's resilience, flexibility, and transformative potential.
