In 1918, Kurt Schwitters met Hans Arp in Berlin and began making collages and assemblages with a Dada flavor. The following year Schwitters began to title these works “Merz”: a word fragment from one of his early creations in this new mode. Merz 316. Ische Gelb is a celebration of the remarkable variety of discarded papers and other daily human leftovers that Schwitters collected: theater and streetcar ticket stubs, silver foil, a snippet of purple fabric with white polka dots, and a wide array of cut or torn paper fragments--many a coated “yellowish” variety, but others painted or printed various bright and muted tones. As is true of nearly all of Schwitters’s collages, the title offers a clue as to how to begin to read the work. Like the term “Merz,” “Ische” is a word fragment, which corresponds to the English “-ly” or “-ish”—meaningless in itself but acquiring playful associations when used as a prefix for “Gelb” (the German word for yellow).