The poetry of torn paper and other detritus

Kurt Schwitter's  'Merze'  collages made from the daily tide of paper detritus, odd bits of things that are washed up and snagged in our consciousness, stuff gleaned from dog eared magazines and forgotton bus tickets fished out from pockets, are an inspiration. All these carefully selected and composed fragments are evidence that beauty and meaning can be discovered in the most unlikely of places. This aesthetic of the ordinary and insignificant provides an important modern foundation for a playful 'art of poverty' charged with particular value and significance. 

'The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is 's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.'

Pablo Picasso. Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 258 (translation Daphne Woodward)