Dieter Roth: A look at a mysterious artist star

Karl-Dietrich Roth was born in Hanover in 1930 and died in Basel in 1998. German art historians, media outlets, etc., tend to categorize Roth among celebrated German artists – which is formally correct, as the child of a German mother, he acquired German citizenship at birth in Germany.

Otherwise, although Dieter Roth spent his early youth in Germany and has held more exhibitions than in any other country in the world, with a Swiss father and many years living in Zurich and Bern, he is equally entitled to be considered a Swiss artist.

Dieter Roth and the art world: A case for specialists

Roth presented the public with a wide spectrum of art : poetry and graphic art, performance and object art, artists' books, drawings, paintings, assemblage, installations, literature, and films . He also presented the public with a wide spectrum of artist names, including Dieter Roth, Diter Rot, and many other invented names.

With all his artistic activities, he has come a long way among the world's artists: In what is probably the most comprehensive "ranking of art" (artfacts.net, compiled primarily according to exhibition presence and sales success), he is currently ranked in the top third of the 100 "best artists in the world", in 2015 at number 27, currently (June 2016) at number 29.

And yet: “Around Dieter Roth” – partly before him, partly after him – are artists like Roy Lichtenstein , Ai Weiwei , Marcel Duchamp , Marina Abramovic and Damien Hirst , whose names everyone knows, while the question about the artist Dieter Roth and his artworks often brings a questioning look to the faces of even art enthusiasts… what is an artist doing at the top of the international art rankings, whose work and fame can almost only be understood by specialists?

An inexplicable fascination that begs for closer examination:

Everyone who knows Dieter Roth knows these: A few typical Dieter Roth comments about our world

Art enthusiasts who experienced the wild 1968 movement or are so deeply involved in the art world that they have studied the works of all the world's top artists will certainly be familiar with several of Roth's major works:

From 1968 onwards, Roth assembled various "garden sculptures" that are sure to make the heart of any hobby gardener with strong DIY ambitions beat a little faster. One of these can now be seen, for example, in the collection of the National Gallery, State Museums in Berlin (Berlin has an incredible number of hobby gardeners with strong DIY ambitions).

In 1969 and 1970, the “6 Piccadillies” , six cassettes with six screen prints on wooden cardboard, which bring a lot of color into the world.

In 1971, Roth's "Self-Portrait as a Potted Flower" may only offer a statement on how he sees himself and his position in the world.

“Garlic Chest” (12 garlic-filled glass boxes on wheels, with wooden frames and individually opening windows), he demonstrates

From 1972 onwards, Roth created several "pooping rabbits" , authentically from rabbit droppings and straw.

From 1974 comes the art object “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Works in 20 Volumes” . The paperback edition, shredded into snippets, enriched with spices and lard, and filled into 20 sausage casings, does not testify to the fact that Roth saw the claim of Hegelian philosophy – to interpret the truly existing world in all its diversity since its inception in a coherent and systematic way – fulfilled in a way that delighted him as a reader.

“Great Table Ruin” took shape , a spatial installation made of texts, art, scrap and waste; even if subjects willing to tidy up and clean are banned from the studio, it simply takes time until an “art hoarder” can draw from a wealth of resources.

"Flacher Abfall" (Flat Waste) showed the hard-working bureaucrat the meaning of his work across 623 folders and five wooden shelves—not really, the "Flacher Abfall" is truly flat waste. Dieter Roth spent years collecting all consumables no thicker than three or four millimeters every day. By the time the 623 file folders were full, Roth was probably already being pursued by militant paper clips in his dreams—but what wouldn't you do for art ?

The “Solo Scenes” , a Roth foray into media art via video installation with 128 monitors and 131 videotapes.

That was a very brief excerpt, a first glimpse of what there is to discover in Roth's work. And there is a great deal to discover; Dieter Roth's art touches upon a wide variety of interests

Anyone interested in artistic design, decoration, DIY, processing and combining (perhaps unknown or newly used) materials will find 111 examples of "quirky Roth art" www.hauserwirth.com , in which things are processed in a completely different way than usual.

Anyone interested in language and its use in communication or as art will benefit from engaging with Dieter Roth's collected interviews. Roth views the interview as an art form in its own right, one of high value; nothing should be omitted, lest even the "nonsense" be lost.

By "nonsense" Roth means recordings that are not journalistically usable, e.g., of his German-accented Swiss German (Roth's thirteen-hour interview with the Swiss author, publisher, cabaret artist and actor Patrik Frey: "Conversation Patrick Frey – Dieter Roth", Zurich, Switzerland, May 1998), interruptions due to stuttering tapes, tangled cables, etc.

The interview, which Roth considers a kind of "jointly composed entertainment music," is something he frequently uses to present his views on life and his work. He also uses it extensively, either as an endless, ongoing interview ( Dieter Schwarz, "Interview with Dieter Roth on September 25, 1983," Tell, 1983, No. 19 ) or as a long-term event ( "Interview with Irmelin Lebeer-Hossmann," Hamburg, Germany, September 28-30, 1976 ).

The "Collected Interviews" were published posthumously in 2002; during his lifetime, Roth had commissioned the artist's book publisher, bookseller, and gallery owner Barbara Wien to research all of his tape recordings and to publish all the conversations he had conducted with artists, journalists, and friends. This was done as commissioned: "Collected Interviews," edited by Barbara Wien. With an afterword by Barbara Wien and a text by Tomas Schmit. Edition Hansjörg Mayer, London/Berlin 2002.

Anyone with a strong urge for reflection can find inspiration in Dieter Roth's diaries. Roth kept two or three diaries simultaneously to generate ideas, to collect words (which Roth called "cheap images"), and to have a vocabulary at hand with which he successfully combated the seemingly logical neologisms of others.

Roth once corrected the dissertation of an art historian, in which he criticized "typical gallery catalog terms" such as "assemblage" and "mixed media" that obscured the view of his work (obviously Roth had hit the nail on the head with his comments; the art historian in question, named Dirk Dobke, became curator of the Dieter Roth Foundation and director of the Dieter Roth Museum with Roth's consent shortly before his death).

Anyone with a penchant for graphic representations might enjoy Roth's paperworks, which are often far more complex than they initially appear.

Dieter Roth's path to art: a consistent passion since his teenage years

Karl-Dietrich Roth was born on April 21, 1930, in Hanover, the third son of a German-Swiss merchant family, and attended elementary and secondary school in Nazi Germany. His parents sent him to live with foster parents in the safety of Switzerland in 1943. His parents did not leave Germany until three years later, also settling in Zurich.

Around this time, Roth produced his first etchings (on tin cans), oil paintings , and poems. In his later youth, he developed a prolific enthusiasm for artistic drawing, pastel painting, and watercolor .

In 1947, Dieter Roth began an apprenticeship as a commercial artist with Urs Friedrich Wüthrich in Bern, but after completing it in 1951, he was unable to find employment. He started working as a freelance artist and, together with graphic designer Marcel Wyss and the Bolivian-Swiss writer Eugen Gomringer, founded the magazine "spirale" (first published two years later, discontinued after nine issues in 1954, and still reviewed today: www.e-periodica.ch) . During this time, Roth earned his living with decorations and other occasional commissions.

In 1954, Roth produced the first "baked plastic" , in 1955 he designed patterns for the textile design company Unika Vaev in Copenhagen, and in 1956 he experimented with Super 8 films .

In 1957, Roth moved to Iceland and soon after married the Icelandic woman Sigridur Björnsdóttir (whom he demanded, on the occasion of their marriage, throw away all her books and clothes from her previous life). Their son Karl was born later that same year, followed by their son Björn in 1961. In the mid-1950s, Roth founded the publishing house Forlag Editions in Iceland together with the Icelandic poet Einar Bragi, which also published some of Roth's works.

In 1958, Roth traveled to Philadelphia with a one-way ticket, having received a tentative offer of a position at the School of Art. However, this offer proved too vague, whereupon Roth tried to gain a foothold in New York, without success. A critical situation arose, as Roth lacked the financial means for the return flight.

He was helped out of this predicament by a fellow Swiss, Herbert Matter, who had been working as a photographer and graphic designer in the USA since 1936. After working for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Arts & Architecture, Fortune Magazine, and Town and Country, Matter was commissioned by MoMA in 1944 to make a film about the sculptor Alexander Calder. The film's great success earned him a professorship in photography and graphic design at Yale University (1952 to 1978); from 1958 onward, he also worked as a consultant to the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Matter secured Roth a teaching position at Yale University and subsequently a position in the advertising department of the Geigy experimental laboratories in Yonkers, near New York. He is said to have been interested in Roth's constructivist work; however, at that time it was also simply common for people of the same background to help each other when living abroad.

Roth saved money for the return flight to Iceland, not without difficulty, because out of frustration over his failure (the teaching position at Yale couldn't have lasted long either) he often invested his salary in consoling alcohol.

Back in Iceland in the early 1960s, Roth created kinetic paintings and sculptures, as well as constructivist stamp paintings. He also published numerous artist's books. His marriage ended in divorce in 1964, leading to a restless life spent between Iceland, Germany, and America. That same year, he launched a remarkable artistic career , beginning with his first solo exhibition in September 1964 at the College of Art in Philadelphia.

Dieter Roth conquers the art world (and shows us how small this art world was in pre-Internet times)

In 1964 in Philadelphia, Roth exhibited works made from and with chocolate for the first time; this was very well received and marked his big breakthrough. As a result, he would repeatedly use organic materials in his art in the future.

The joyful "chocolate era" was followed by a period of a more nuanced view of the world ("spice paintings"), culminating in increasing disillusionment, from "objects and images of decay" to "mold paintings ." Roth needed only about half a decade for this development; even the chocolate paintings had already been eaten away by chocolate moths.

In 1967, Roth met the American painter, graphic artist, object and video artist Dorothy Iannone , who had just arrived in Reykjavík with her husband and Fluxus co-founder Emmett Williams. A passionate advocate for women's sexual freedom (also in practical terms), Iannone published a book that same year listing all the men with whom she had experienced this freedom for a night, took Dieter Roth as her muse, and separated from her husband.

Shortly afterwards, the two joined the Fluxus movement led by Emmett Williams and Robert Filliou . They lived alternately in Basel, Düsseldorf, Reykjavík, and London. Through his Fluxus friends, Roth met Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri and was inspired by their "Nouveau Réalisme," distancing himself further and further from Constructivism and preferring to create more Eat Art .

But not only that, in the late 1960s and 1970s Roth also designed a whole series of book objects that were close to Dada and Kurt Schwitters, wrote many, many poems for Iannone, had her paint his portrait – and exhibited his work:

For example, in 1968 at "documenta 4" and in 1977 at "documenta 7" (and posthumously at documenta 11 in 2002), and in 1979 at the 3rd Sydney Biennale. He held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Kunsthalle Basel, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, the Akademie der Künste Berlin, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; group exhibitions of his work were shown at venues including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, the Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels, the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York.

By the late 1970s, Dieter Roth had established himself as one of the most important contemporary artists of the time. He collaborated with other prominent artists of the era, happenings with the Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer and joint paintings and interviews with the British painter and graphic artist Richard Hamilton . In 1982, Roth was commissioned to design Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

More than 1000 exhibitions…

Dieter Roth's art has been featured in nearly 1,000 exhibitions , most of them (around 350) in Germany, approximately 150 in his second home, Switzerland, 110 in the USA, 70 in Austria, and just over 40 in France. These exhibitions comprise roughly 200 solo shows compared to nearly 800 group exhibitions; an indication that Roth preferred to delegate marketing rather than handle it himself…

Were it not for his active presence in the USA and France and his close relationship with Iceland, Dieter Roth could be classified as a DA-CH artist (DA-CH: a neologism made up of D for Germany, A for Austria and CH for Confoederatio Helvetica, used to describe activities and events that affect Germany, Austria and Switzerland jointly).

Dieter Roth's art was always an event; in his artist's books, he also engaged quite extensively with the language known as "Standard German," which represents the so-called "standard language" in these three countries. Albeit in a rather irreverent manner, in which this Standard German is often dissected down to its very foundations…

The solo exhibitions confirm the image of the DA-CH artist (Germany 47, Switzerland 6, Austria 8). At the same time, the list of other countries in which Dieter Roth exhibited during his lifetime provides us with an illuminatingly precise snapshot of the dissemination of art in pre-internet times:

The year in which Dieter Roth died was one of the years in which a decisive shift occurred in the culture of the civilized world. The computer networking system developed by the US Department of Defense starting in 1969 (for better communication between universities and research institutions, ARPANET) had been unified into a single "Internet Protocol" by the early 1980s, having previously consisted of several not necessarily compatible "ARPANET protocols," and from then on was increasingly referred to as the "Internet.".

The Domain Name System (DNS) was fully developed in 1984, enabling worldwide communication via the internet. It initially spread through universities around the world and in 1990 was made publicly available for commercial purposes by the American National Science Foundation.

At the same time, Tim Berners-Lee invented the foundations of the World Wide Web for the Swiss CERN; in 1989 he had completed the development of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). After developing the necessary "accessories" (HTTP transfer protocol, URL, WorldWideWeb browser, CERN httpd web server, NeXTSTEP operating system), he made the CERN-internal hypertext service publicly and globally available on August 6, 1991 – the WWW was born and began its triumphant march around the world.

By 1998, this triumphant march had progressed so far that a "New Economy" began its development and the EU launched an initiative for global internet regulations; the internet was about to become part of daily life for all curious people.

During his lifetime (until 1998), Dieter Roth exhibited in only 10 countries besides his native Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (18 times in the USA, 9 times in France, 7 times in Iceland, 6 times in the Netherlands, 6 times in Great Britain, 4 times in Spain, 3 times in Denmark, and once each in Belgium, Canada, and Italy). After his death, he exhibited in only a few more countries, including Norway, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Portugal – typical for artists of his generation.

Very few artists who became famous in a space limited to certain nationalities shortly before the networking of the international art world through the Internet, now develop into world artists with the advent of the Internet (with their later work or posthumously) – “world artists” in the sense that an artist is immediately adopted by/exhibited in every country that is sufficiently advanced in terms of security/civilization/democracy to be able to “offer art” to its citizens.

Of the recently deceased or living artists art Andy Warhol (No. 1), Pablo Picasso (No. 2), and Joseph Beuys (No. 4).

Bruce Nauman's art (No. 3) is already primarily exhibited in the traditional strongholds of art; as is the art of Gerhard Richter , Cindy Sherman , John Baldessari , Lawrence Weiner, Ed Ruscha, Sol LeWitt , Thomas Ruff , and Sigmar Polke, thus completing the leading dozen. These top artists are also spreading across the newly emerging art centers, but only gradually, in a kind of ongoing process of art discovery.

For now, it is reserved for the legends of art to conquer even the most remote corners of the world where art is exhibited. These are works that don't occupy the top spots in the current world rankings of art, compiled by sales and exhibition success, because the (often few) surviving works are already secured as world heritage in some public museum.

No chance of disappearing forever into the basement of a publicity-shy collector for a few million at auction... and so the true stars of art end up in the back ranks ( Vincent van Gogh : 227, Claude Monet : 212, Édouard Manet : 379, Pierre-Auguste Renoir: 359, Paul Cézanne: 224, Max Liebermann: 1111; Caspar David Friedrich, Raffaello Santi (Raphael), Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Titian, Rembrandt van Rijn, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci cannot even be ranked due to the lack of comparability of the sales prices paid centuries ago).

In doing so, they impressively and emphatically demonstrate the limitations of an artist ranking that includes sales prices (along with grotesque market developments)... and the "art novices of this world" are fortunate enough to be able to hone their knowledge of art on the old masters before they are allowed to wonder why someone would pay 56 million dollars for a printed and colored "Colored Mona Lisa " by Andy Warhol (leader of the current world ranking) or 58.4 million dollars for an oversized "Balloon Dog" (balloon poodle in orange).

Dieter Roth in "Welt von heute"

The 1000 exhibitions featuring Dieter Roth's art will not be the last; the fact that only about a third of these exhibitions took place during the artist's lifetime and about two-thirds after his death gives an indication of where things are headed.

To properly interpret these figures, however, statistics would need to be included on the extent to which art exhibitions worldwide have increased overall since the art world became a global art world… there are clear indications that there is significantly more art to see all over the world since the planning of exhibitions has become much easier through the networking of owners or those entitled to dispose of the art (art in public collections belongs to the people of the respective country).

In 2016, works by Dieter Roth were shown in five exhibitions in three countries. Dieter Roth remains even more loyal to the German-speaking countries posthumously than during his lifetime, or rather, they to him – they have played a significant role in Roth's remarkable rise in the "world art rankings" over the last decade (2005: 62nd place, 2015: 27th place).

The Dieter Roth Foundation manages Roth's artistic legacy. The foundation's origins date back to the 1970s, when Dieter Roth, together with his most dedicated collector, the Hamburg lawyer Philip Buse, began to establish a private museum with an attached archive of his work.

Dieter Roth Foundation Museum presents original works by Roth, an almost complete collection of his prints including many preparatory prints, all of his artist's books, several pieces of jewelry created by Roth, exhibition posters and other design drafts on four floors.

Until 2003, the collection also included the "Mold Museum ," a coach house that had been decaying for decades. The artist discovered it in 1991 and enthusiastically appropriated it as a "mold and chocolate laboratory." Until 1998, he spent his time there cooking, pouring, bubbling, and experimenting. Roth's art experiments likely accelerated the decay of the damp carriage house even further, as the mold paintings and Eat Art objects continued to "do their work"—that is, to decompose vigorously—before and after his death.

The end of the "Mold Museum" was heralded by neighbors who sued the museum out of fear of spreading germs; the place, which in many respects truly symbolized transience, was demolished in 2003.

You can still visit the Mold Museum online today. The Dieter Roth Foundation , dieter-roth-foundation.com, invites you on a virtual tour, albeit without the "characteristic smell" and the "stickiness under your shoes ," as the introduction explicitly points out. But presumably, that's quite pleasant... You can also view a selection of Roth's works from the collection described above.

Paintings by Dieter Roth are still available today at prices that ordinary people could afford:

• "1 of 5 Hermaphrodites", mixed media, 1981, estimated price: €4,000
• "Motorcyclist", multiple from 1969, estimated price €5,000
• "Kiss in the Window 2", mixed media, 1976, estimated price €10,000

Here are the current auction items: kettererkunst.de .

Furthermore, Dieter Roth left behind a number of things that we can access today:

Books by Dieter Roth:

• Ideograms, 1959
• Mundunculum, 1967
• the blue flood, 1967
• 246 little clouds, 1968 Something Else Press, New York
• with co-author Daniel Spoerri: Anecdotes on a Topography of Chance. 1998. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1968, new edition 1998 Nautilus, Hamburg

Collected Works in 20 volumes, 1971–79, edition (later expanded to 40 volumes)

• With co-authors CE Shannon, John McCarthy (eds.): Studies on the Theory of Automata (Automata Studies). Expanded edition and translation by Franz Kaltenbeck and Peter Weibel.

Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective

• Edited by Theodora Vischer and  Bernadette Walter. A comprehensive collection with chronology and commentaries on the works. Available as a hardcover edition on Amazon.

Drawings by Dieter Roth. Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1974 (First edition: Princeton 1956)

• Dieter Roth: Early Writings and Typical Shit. Selected and with a heap of partially digested material by Oswald Wiener. 1200 copies of the first edition published under no. 125 in the Luchterhand Collection in 1973, saved from pulping in 1975 and published in an additional cover by Edition Hansjörg Mayer. Stuttgart, London, Reykjavik
• Magazine for everything, 10 issues No. 1-No. 10B, 1975–1987
• Collected Interviews. Posthumously edited by Barbara Wien. Edition Hansjörg Mayer, London/Berlin 2002
• Dieter Roth in America, London 2004
• Dieter Roth in Greenland, Amsterdam 2005
• Inside, before the eye. Poetry and prose, edited by Jan Voss, Beat Keusch, Johannes Ullmaier, Björn Roth. Frankfurt 2005

Works by Dieter Roth are preserved in 50 public collections for the art enthusiasts of the future:

• Belgium : Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst Ghent
• Denmark : Museet for Samtidskunst / Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde
• Germany : Daimler Contemporary + Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art Bremen, Kunstmuseum Celle, Museum Ostwall Dortmund, Alison & Peter W. Klein Collection Eberdingen-Nussdorf, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt/Main,
  Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum Hagen, Hamburger Kunsthalle + Reinking Collection Hamburg, Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hannover
  Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Artothek Kassel, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Kunstmuseum + Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
• France : Musée de l'Objet Blois, FRAC Bretagne Châteaugiron, Musées d'Art Contemporain Marseille, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain + Center Pompidou Paris, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne Reims
• Iceland : Nýlistasafnið The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik
• Canada : Simon Fraser University Art Gallery Burnaby, BC
• Austria : Neue Galerie Graz, Essl Museum Kunst der Gegenwart Klosterneuburg
• Spain : Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
• Switzerland : Kunstmuseum Basel, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Vögele Kulturzentrum Pfäffikon, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Kunsthaus Zug, Graphic Collection of ETH Zurich + Museum Haus Konstruktiv + Kunsthaus Zürich
• USA : University Art Museum University at Albany of the State University of New York Albany NY, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago IL, University Art Museum of California State University Long Beach CA, Museum of Modern Art New York City NY, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art Norman OK, David Winton Bell Gallery Providence RI, Saint Louis Art Museum Saint Louis MO, The William Benton Museum of Art Storrs CT
• United Kingdom : Kettle's Yard Cambridge Cambridgeshire, Tate Britain London

Legendary quotes from Dieter Roth, a "look behind the scenes"

quotes from Dieter Roth are primarily preserved :

I simply don't believe that asceticism does anyone any good, except that it represents a triumph for those who practice it

(found on fluxus-plus.de ), a quote from Dieter Roth on the worldview of the Fluxus artists, which he himself never really shared with Dorothy Iannone.

When someone thinks about something, it's really just like trying to acquire vocabulary. Like a mine that needs to be exploited… My life gives me vocabulary with which I can successfully fight other people.”

(found on synapsenschnitt.de ).

This quote already hints at the artist's (self-)destructive side; even in the aforementioned "Collected Interviews," Roth's ambition-driven nature repeatedly shines through, as he tirelessly, yet wearily, tries to emulate role models he perceives as a threat. Roth's reality was defined by failing to meet his own expectations, by a feeling of insecurity because he "could not acquire security.".

At least he tries to use this feeling of uncertainty productively for himself:

In times of uncertainty, you can do anything you want: smear, pee, chat, and even make kitsch... I can immerse myself in the unrest and uncertainty, and there I actually feel safe because I realize I can make a living from it.

(Quote from the "Collected Interviews").

What “actually safe” means is explored by the Swiss filmmaker Edith Jud in her film portrait “Dieter Roth” : The film begins in Iceland, with flowing water over mossy ground, bubbling mud in geysers; elements in fermentation that are still in fermentation a little later, but now show images from Dieter Roth’s “mold museum”.

The film continues seemingly calmly, telling a story of life and, incidentally, much art, telling of alcoholism and despair; of a son who wants to save his father: "Can't you see that you're at rock bottom?", of a father who replies: "Someone has to go down to the bottom." A wistful film about a world-renowned artist who never enjoyed his success and ultimately drank himself into ruin.

Dieter Roth's work provides many ideas

From 1964 onwards, Dieter Roth passed on his artistic knowledge to the next generation of artists: He received numerous teaching positions , including at the architecture department of Yale University, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, the Watford School of Art in London, and the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Roth's destructive approach to art is also said to have occasionally caused problems in his teaching practice; for example, his studio was reportedly cleared and his works destroyed due to a strong smell of decay…

Those who are not so keen on decay will also find more than enough quirky irony and amusing oddities in Roth's work to draw positive inspiration from it:

has ever wanted to reverse the saying "Don't play with your food" "chocolate lion towers" , "self towers" (portrait heads cast in chocolate) and "double spice windows" .

Those who enjoy crafting, shaping, and modeling will find the 360° objects "Motorcycle Race" , "Paperweight" and "Drawer" irresistible.

And those who love language will appreciate linguistic works of art such as

"Ball Balle Knalle
When do we bang in the hall?
We bang when the bang comes
And bang what's good for the banger!
Knalle Knalle Balle
That's how it bangs in the hall"

(Source: deutschlandfunk.de ), which Roth conceived as a representative of "concrete poetry" , is not over anyway.

While this “concrete poetry” has infinitely more to offer, and sometimes surprisingly profound linguistic wit, it can captivate people for a long time – there are said to be recitation artists who have spent half their lives developing the unattainable performance of Christian Morgenstern’s “Fish’s Night Song” ; but that is a whole other topic.