Dieter Roth - Under the Influence New York Tuesday, February 27, 2007 | Phillips

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  • 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

78

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.

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Under the Influence

26 Feb 2007, 10am & 2pm
New York