Dieter Roth, engaged with the Fluxes movement and produced many notable works. The Fluxes movement included many prominent individual artists, and I feel was a direct revival of the Dada period under a new name. The similarity is very exacting. Roth distanced himself from the Fluxes group as not to be consumed. His work is inspirational and experimental, with the solarised image covered in goats cheese as an example. ‘in order to get his goat. I thought he would turn blue and green, like cheese.’1
Roth’s image from 1970 shown here is a screen print, which could question originality, however, I find keeps the eyes exploring the image for interest and exploration. The tones which only have a small range of colours, blues and orange-brown, offer such a great diversity of elements. The darker colours lifting away to create individual images before you plunge into the lower tones of the blue.
This I feel is an excellent example of abstract work because of the individual detail within the image with no representation or signifier within the image.
The Tate has a collection of his paintings and prints available to view online, I find that there is such great variation within the body of work. The ‘self-portrait at a table’ is a good example of the surrealist influence and then other works depict other styles, but the abstract theme underlies many of the work.
Bibliography
- Roth, quoted in Roth Time, Dobke and Walter, Lars Müller, 2004, p77
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