Geoscience Reference
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disgusting meal. Roth's art explored food, taste and biodegrada-
tion - rot, in short. Associated with the Dadaist group Fluxus in
the 1960s, his work provoked, annoyed and fascinated galleries
and collectors. He collaborated with Richard Hamilton, Daniel
Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Joseph Beuys and others to make art that
was fragile, fleeting and random. His chocolate or cheese exhibits
were mostly eaten by gallery goers, or simply rotted away. He
painted his photographic portrait of the Swiss collector Carl
Laszlo with processed cheese 'to get his goat', and in an exhibit
in 1970 he filled 37 suitcases in a Los Angeles gallery with cheese,
which after a few days began to stink and crawl with maggots.
The whole show was taken out and dumped in the desert. Roth
took himself very seriously, as did a wide constituency of gal-
leries, collectors and friends, who hold an annual international
Dieter Roth,
Surtsey,
1973-4,
collotype.
