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". 

Alex Snukal | Me and Julio Down by Diter's Dung Hole

Alex Snukal

Me and Julio Down by Diter's Dung Hole 

Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2009

10 x 15 cm

Edition of 25

$50.00 CDN

Snukal responds to a postcard edition originally created by Yoko Ono in 1971 and altered by Diter Rot the following year (see below post). Making literal a quote from a Julio Cortázar novel that invokes a euphoric epiphany as equivocal to pushing a pebble through one's asshole, Snukal one-up's Diter with a third iteration.

Each card is hand altered by pushing a stone through its centre hole, and with the following silkscreened text:

"…look at the world through the eye of your asshole and you’ll see patterns pretty as can be, the pebble had to pass through the eye of your asshole…"

From Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar, 1966

Available from the Nothing Else Press, here. 

Dieter Rot[h] | Asshole

Dieter Rot[h]

Asshole

Heidelberg, Germany: Edition Staeck, 1972 

10 x 15 cm.

Edition size unknown

The earliest response work to Yoko Ono's A Hole to See the Sky Through was published a mere year after the original (see below posts). This work transforms the original with a self portrait doodle and an alteration to the text, so that it now reads "D.Rot's Asshole Looking At Yoko Ono".

It's difficult to know if this was a loving gesture or an act of hostility. Roth was known to be dismissive of Fluxus ("It was the club of the untalented who made a verbal virtue of their lack of talent so that nobody could say they had no talent. The modesty that they ascribed to themselves was actually a good insight in that sense. Because they had to be modest because they were so incapable.") while maintaining close friendships with many Fluxus affiliated artists. 

The fact that it was published by Edition Stack, who continued to produce Ono's original alongside the interventionist postcard, suggests it may have been amicable. 

Recent Still Life

[Dieter Roth, cover design]

Recent Still Life 

Providence, USA: Rhode Island School of Design, 1966

[120] pp., 21.5 x 17.5 cm, softcover

Edition of 1000 numbered copies

Exhibition catalogue for a show that took place from February 23rd to April 4th, 1966, with works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Louise Bourgeois, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, and Dieter Roth, who designed the cover. 

Valued at between $500 and $900 US, when initialled by Rot(h). 

Dorothy Iannone | (Ta)Rot Pack

Dorothy Iannone 

(Ta)Rot Pack

New York City, USA: New Museum Store, 2009

[27] pp., 13 x 9.8 x 1.6 cm., loose leaves

Edition of 60 signed and numbered copies

In 1967, Dorothy Iannone accompanied Emmett Williams on a trip from New York to Iceland. Williams was going to meet up with Dieter Roth, whose forthcoming book he was editing. After an eight day long sailing trip - with only a few other passengers - they arrived in Reykjavik. Roth was waiting for them at the pier, with fresh wrapped fish in newspaper under his arm. 

"And when I saw Dieter," Iannone writes in An Icelandic Saga, "I knew I would change my life". She separated from her husband a week later.

The pair lived together in Düsseldorf, Reykjavik, Basel and London until 1974 (which Iannone called “their seven year embrace”). He became a muse to her and features in much of her artwork. 

Many of these works appeared in her first solo show in the US, which was held when she was 75 years old. To accompany the exhibition The New Museum published this deck of twenty-seven tarot cards. 

Based on drawings made in 1968 and '69, the cards depicts scenes from artist Roth’s life, often together with Iannone. They are pictured fishing, hunting, cooking and fucking. The card for patience portrays Roth teaching class, indigestion features him dining with friends, reverence depicts him giving Iannone oral sex (as does Pacifies, above, bottom). 

In the top right corner of each card Iannone illustrates an image of Roth’s own artwork. Depending on the context of his work, he used many variations of his name: Dieter Roth, dieter roth, DITERROT, Dietrich Roth, etc. The title (Ta)Rot Pack refers to the common variation where he dropped the 'h' in his name. 

In addition to the deluxe set of cards which are signed and numbered and housed in a handmade cherry wood custom box, a trade edition (unsigned, unboxed) was also produced in an edition of 190, for a total of 250. 

MoMA Sale

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City is currently offering several of their titles at up to 75% off, including books on Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Walid Raad, Bjork, Louise Lawler, Elaine Sturtevant, Dieter Roth, and many others. A Gilbert and George vinyl record is also part of the sale. 

Visit their website, here, for details.