Artists’ Chocolate

 

Dieter Roth | Little Tentative Recipe

Dieter Roth

Little Tentative Recipe

Stuttgart, Germany: Edition Hansjorg Mayer, 1968

11.3 x 10.3 x 10.3 cm.

Edition of 100 signed, dated and numbered copies

A miniature book (8.8 x 8.8 x 8.8 cm) made from approximately 800 multicoloured Rotaprint-prints and housed in a stamped wooden box (typically made to hold tea), which also served as its shipping container. 

The work was designed and bound by Graham Paw and John Wells and printed by students at the Watford School of Art, England, following the instructions/score or 'recipe' by Roth:

"PRINT until you cant stand it anymore or [until] you dont want anymore, take away, for binding for instance, the sheets which the machine cannot take anymore (torn, wrinkled, or beautiful according to someone's taste), dont throw anything away"

Dieter Roth | Quick

Dieter Roth

Quick

Koln/Amsterdam: Rudolf Rieser/Bookie Wookie, 1965/1994

[150] pp., 1 x 3 x 1.8 cm., softcover

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Quick was a German-language news magazine active for forty-four years, between 1948 and 1992. It was the first periodical published in Germany after World War Two1. By 1960 the magazine had reached peak circulation, with 1.7 million copies printed weekly. 

After previously turning its pages into sausage, Dieter Roth used the periodical to produce approximately 150 copies of a small hand-bound book to distribute for free at an exhibition in Koln, in 1965. They were published by Rudolf Reiser, a bookbinder who helped fabricate, finance and promote many of Roth’s works of this era. Fewer than fifty were taken by visitors to the exhibition, leaving behind just over a hundred copies. 

Decades later, in 1994, gallerist Rudolf Zwirner discovered a shoe box containing 105 copies of the miniature books. He contacted Walter Koenig, who suggested that Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam might help revive the project. 

A ‘re-issue’ was released with the copies signed “1965/1994” by Roth and housed in a clear plastic box with a blue adhesive hinge and the addition of a wrap-around information sheet. Printed in Dutch, English, German, and Icelandic, the info sheet explains the work’s provenance in the artist’s own handwriting. 

The books - reportedly the smallest Roth had made - feature approximately 150 sheets cut from Quick Magazine, bound by glue and a cotton string spine. Other magazines that received similar treatment include Dagblegt Bul, Der Spiegel and Icelandic Leather.

Quick is currently valued at over a thousand dollars. 

1. The magazine’s chief editor for many years was Traudl Junge, the former secretary to Adolf Hitler, who typed out his Last Will and Testament immediately before the dictator's suicide. 

Puzzles

 

Dieter Roth | Piccadilly Postcard Puzzle

Dieter Roth

Piccadilly Postcard Puzzle

London, UK: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 2005

96 pp., 12 x 17 cm., boxed

Edition size unknown

A clamshell box containing reproductions of the 6 Piccadillies (see previous post), each one enlarged and cut into 16 postcard-size pieces which can be sent out individually and reassembled at random.

When Roth produced the first series, he imagined them being cut up into a "Giant Piccadilly Puzzle" with interchangeable elements. This work, produced by longtime friend and collaborator Hansjörg Mayer, completes the work as Roth intended. 

Dieter Roth | 6 Piccadillies

Dieter Roth

6 Piccadillies

London, UK: Petersburg Press, 1970

61.3 x 77.8 x 8.9 cm.

Edition of 150

A portfolio of six double-sided screen print over offset lithographs, one with iron fillings, mounted board. 

"In the late 1960s, Rita Donagh, wife of Roth’s longtime friend and collaborator Richard Hamilton, gave the artist a postcard of London’s famous Piccadilly Circus. This unremarkable image is the basis for one of the artist’s best-known series of artworks, 6 Piccadillies. Roth enlarged and reproduced the image as a doublesided photolithograph, then transformed it through various interventions: overprinting it in Day-Glo colors, sub-merging it in a fog of translucent white, and almost completely erasing it with a layer of iron filings. The portfolio cover resembles a suitcase, an item that had a constant presence in Roth’s itinerant life. 96 Piccadillies, a later volume, reproduces the artist’s paintings on postcards picturing the same landmark; the reproductions themselves can be separated and sent as postcards.”

- MoMA wall label

Dieter Roth | Ins Meer (Im Meer)

Dieter Roth

Ins Meer (Im Meer)

Cologne, Germany: Rudolf Reiser, 1970

8.6 x 20 x 17.8 cm.

Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

A toy plane made of sheet metal and blue coloured icing in a cardboard box. The title translates to "Into the Sea".