Dieter Roth

February 17–June 24, 2013

  • Introduction
  • Selected Works
    • The Concrete
    • Mass Media Experiments
    • Reinventing Formats
    • Verbal Visual Equivalency
    • Snow
    • Containers
  • Multimedia: Staying Fresh
  • Interview with the Artist
  • Exhibition Checklist
  • Publication
  • Events
  • About the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books
  • Credits
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Literature Sausage

Dieter Roth. Literature Sausage (Literaturwurst). 1969, published 1961–70

Artist's book of ground book, gelatin, lard, and spices in natural casing, 12 x 6 11/16 x 3 9/16" (30.5 x 17 x 9 cm). Publisher and fabricator: the artist. Edition: artist's proof before the edition of 50. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Print Associates Fund in honor of Deborah Wye. Photograph: Thomas Griesel. © 2013 Estate of Dieter Roth

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Between 1961 and 1970 Roth created about fifty “literature sausages.” To make each sausage Roth followed a traditional recipe, but with one crucial twist: where the recipe called for ground pork, veal, or beef, he substituted a ground-up book or magazine. Roth mixed the ground-up texts with fat, gelatin, water, and spices before stuffing them into sausage casings. The source materials included work by authors and periodicals that the artist either envied or despised; they run the gamut from lowbrow illustrated tabloids to well-regarded contemporary German novels to the works of Karl Marx and the influential philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Get more information about Roth’s Literature Sausage (Literaturwurst).