Exile, Correspondence, Rebellion – Tracing the Interactive Relationship between Iceland and Dieter Roth
Anna Jóhannsdóttir
Abstract
The Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth (1930–1998) lived in Iceland for a long time and maintained a close relationship with the country throughout his life. Much of his early experimental book art was produced in Iceland between 1957 and 1964, at first under the influence of concrete art, until he shifted towards more radical avant-garde ideas and methods linked with the Fluxus movement – ideas he continued to develop through correspondence with important European artists and which he imported into the local art scene, where he was a shaping force in the 1960s and ’70s.
It was love that brought Dieter Roth (1930–1998) to Iceland in 1957. Following his wife-to-be, he embarked Gullfoss, a ship named after the majestic Icelandic “golden waterfall”, and sailed from Copenhagen to Reykjavík. The young artist would eventually develop a strong and lasting relationship with the country. In fact, it is tempting to compare his impact in Iceland to a golden waterfall: Dieter, as he is usually referred to in Iceland, certainly was a fascinating flux of creative energy; a goldmine of artistic ideas and improvisational talent. When considering this relationship and exploring its interactivity, two main questions arise: how Roth’s stay in the country may have shaped his artistic work, and how his presence influenced the local art scene, in particu- lar Iceland as an arena of avant-garde cultural activity, a melting pot of experimentation. Without Dieter, contemporary avant-garde activity in the visual arts “would perhaps all have gone by unnoticed”, the artist, stage designer and influential teacher Magnús Pálsson (b. 1929) once noted (Harðarson 1998: 21). At the time of his arrival, in the 1950s, Roth already had connections with important con- temporary avant-garde artists in Europe. Through correspondence with artists such as Daniel Spoerri and Richard Hamilton he was able to build a career and establish an international reputation, in spite of his geographical isolation. To his artist friends and students in Iceland, Roth proved to be an inspiring and direct link to the exterior world; it was in particular his participation in the
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Fluxus movement that influenced many young Icelandic artists at the time, leading to the formation of the SÚM group in 1965, which in turn has had a major impact on the country’s art scene. Internationally acclaimed avant- garde artists exhibited in the SÚM iii gallery show in 1969, alongside local art- ists (Gíslason 1989: 20–24).1 Thanks to Roth, many of these artists took on short-term teaching jobs at the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts.2 As a result, a large part of the local contemporary art scene came to be directly involved with global avant-garde activity, and several of the SÚM artists, as well as the “second generation” of avant-garde artists associated with the Living Art Museum (founded 1978), are internationally known: artists such as Hreinn Friðfinnsson (b. 1943), Kristján Guðmundsson (b. 1941), Sigurður Guðmundsson (b. 1942), Rúrí (b. 1951), Birgir Andrésson (1955–2007) and Finnbogi Pétursson (b. 1959).
Book Art: Concrete Poetry and Innovations
One of the most important aspects of Dieter Roth’s work in Iceland is his book art, including his preoccupation with written/pictorial documentation and the diary, a form that eventually expanded into every aspect of his oeuvre. Roth was an influential pioneer in the field of book art, and the majority of his early books were published in Reykjavík in the late 1950s – well before book- works became a widespread experimental practice among visual artists in the counter-establishment art scene of the ’60s.3 Trained as a commercial artist and designer, Roth was well acquainted with publishing. During his training years in Bern, where concrete art was predomi- nant, he had made connections with artists such as Marcel Wyss and the writer Eugen Gomringer. In fact, Wyss, Gomringer and Roth were associated with the publication of the journal spirale, in which Roth published some of his own concrete poems as well as designing the layout. He moved to Iceland after meeting Sigríður Björnsdóttir in Copenhagen, where he had worked for about
1 The exhibition included works by, e.g., Dieter Roth, Robert Filliou, Joseph Beuys, Richard Hamilton, Daniel Spoerri and Arthur Køpcke. 2 An experimental neo-art department was founded in 1975, with performance art, happenings, multiples and book art on the curriculum. Among the teachers (usually for one semester each) were Dieter Roth, Robert Filliou, Hermann Nitsch and Ulises Carrión (Harðarson 1998: 30). 3 As Aðalsteinn Ingólfsson (1988: 54) points out, Roth produced forty-five books during the years 1957–70, when he was closely linked to Iceland and Icelandic artists, thirty of which were made in Iceland and printed at Jón Helgason’s press, in Hólar or Litbrá, in collaboration with local artists, writers and printers.