Dieter Roth & Arnulf Rainer – Collaborations

Provocation - Collaboration

There are some wild anecdotes surrounding the collaboration between these two exceptional artists, which began in 1974 and resulted in almost 500 works, most of which have no direct connection to individual works by Dieter Roth or Arnulf Rainer. Rather, both artists endeavoured to allow their individual concepts to collide unchecked in order to create works of slapstick-like performativity and humour-fuelled visual wit. The smaller and slender Arnulf Rainer often approached the taller and corpulent Dieter Roth as a provocative whisperer, and Roth sometimes reacted to Rainer's pictorial ideas and inspirations with targeted aggression. Photographs accompanied these meetings. Rainer then edited the photos and passed them on to Roth, who completed the work. In addition to a number of "Fuzzle Pieces", this volume also brings together large-format drawings and the most beautiful examples of collaborative drawing and graphic works labelled as "Misch- u. Trennkunst", in which Björn Roth was also included in the collaboration from the 1980s onwards.

Exhibition:
Hauser & Wirth, London, 14/3 - 3/5/2014