Merz may refer to:
Merz (art style) is a synonym for the more common expression and term Dada, and traces back to Kurt Schwitters.
The made-up word Merz, however, traces back to Kurt Schwitters, who planned a Dada section in Hanover. But not being invited to the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920, Schwitters was on the look-out for a totally unique hat fitting only a single head"— his own.
He found Merz by chance when creating a collage with the German word Kommerz (commerce). The result: a nonsensical‚ dadaistic’ word. Merz became Schwitters 's very synonym for his own way of Dada.
Kurt Schwitters, father of installation art and a pioneer in fusing collage and abstraction—those two most transformative innovations of the 20th century art— influenced Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, the Fluxus movement and Joseph Beuys, too.
Merz is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Went into town on a Thursday
To the Sunny Bank Mill
My car newly fixed I’d to pay them the bill
When I pulled from a pocket my phone
It fell into the road
What with the water on the road
Overhead electric cables
From my shattered phone rose a corkscrewing rainbow
Which drew up to the sky the names and numbers
Of everyone I know
Now every number is a satellite
Each name a moon’s crater
All the sky has come alive illumined with my data
A powerless and lonely man is me
Now I’ve nobody
Sometimes I feel
It’s just within my grasp
The truth of things and questions often asked
But I’m falling pointing
Sometimes I feel
It’s just within my grasp
I’m on to something, something that could last
But I’m falling pointing
Sometimes I feel
It’s just within my grasp
A signal loud and clear, a blinding flash
Leaves me falling pointing
I feel
It’s just within my grasp
The veils to faint perception lift at last
I’m falling pointing
Went for a walk on the Sunday
To the old Scapegoat Hill
No one to accompany me I’m lost in thought still
I dozed off in a field and while I dream
Satellites watch me.