Beschreibung:

Dieter Roth P.O.TH.A.A VFB (Portrait of the artist as Vogelfutterbüste) 1968-1970 Plaster covered with chocolate on wood with plastic label. 8 1/4 x 9 x 9 3/4 in. Signed and dated “Dieter Roth 1969” on a sticker adhered to bottom of base and titled “P.O.TH.A.A.VFB” on artist’s made label adhered to side of base. This work is from an edition of 30 unnumbered works.
Provenance David Zwirner Gallery, New York Exhibited NewYork, PS1, Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective, March 12 - June 7, 2004 (another example exhibited); New York, Museum of Modern Art, Eye on Europe: Prints, Books and Multiples/1960 to Now, October 15, 2006 - January 1, 2007 (another example exhibited) Catalogue Essay “In 1968, the Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930–1998) placed a bust made of chocolate and birdseed in a garden where it was pecked apart by birds. Called P.O.TH.A.A.VFB., a German acronym for Portrait of the Artist as Birdseed Bust, the work lampooned romantic views of art, transforming marble into chocolate and viewers into birdbrains. The reverence accorded canonical figures, the faith that art was immortal, the fascination with an individual artist’s character—he ridiculed them all. Roth even mocked the demigod James Joyce, whose Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man he regarded as kitsch. Despite its iconoclastic spirit, however, the Birdseed Bust was a traditional work of art—the expression of an old, recurring perspective in modernism. Roth was kin to the Dadaists, the Fluxus artists, and all those joyful moderns who, detesting highfalutin airs, knocked down idols and brought the messy vitality of life into art. Like many predecessors and contemporaries—notably Robert Rauschenberg—he chose to emphasize the street over the ivory tower, the disorder of daily existence over the eternal verities. He crowded art and life together.” (Peter Rainer, New York Magazine, April 4, 2004 Read More