Literaturwurst is an Artist's book, made by the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth

Dieter Roth

Dieter Roth was an Icelandic artist of Swiss German origin best known for his artist's books and for his sculptures and pictures made with rotting food stuffs. He was also known as Dieter Rot and Diter Rot....

 between 1961 and 1974. Each book was made using traditional sausage

Sausage

A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...

 recipes, but replacing the sausage meat with a book or magazine. The cover of the edition was then pasted onto the skin of the sausage and signed and dated.

'When I was young I wanted to become a real artist. Then I started doing something I felt wasn't real art, and it was through this that I became a well-known artist.' Dieter Roth

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Roth made the first Literature Sausage from a copy of the Daily Mirror, whilst living in Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

, and gave it to his friend and colleague Daniel Spoerri

Daniel Spoerri

Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania, who has been called "the central figure of European post-war art" and "one of the most renown[ed] [artists] of the 20th century." Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures...

 in 1961. This makes it contemporaneous with his book Daily Mirror that Roth constructed this year, and was part of a series of books that used found printed matter, such as comics and off-set run up sheets, and rebound them to disrupt their visual authority.

“From time to time I take books I can’t stand or from authors I want to annoy and make: sausages c. 40 cm long, 8 cm thick, should end up as an edition of 50, titled on the outside, signed, numbered, DM100.”

In 1963, after realizing the sausage had “ironic value” he offered the book to George Maciunas

George Maciunas

George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...

 to be published as a Fluxus

Fluxus

Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 Edition via mutual friend Arthur Kopke. Maciunas turned down the idea, although Roth still participated in a number of early Fluxus events. He returned to the idea in 1966, producing 24 over the next few years, using books such as Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...

, To Seek A Newer World by Robert Kennedy and The Redhead by Alfred Andersch

Alfred Andersch

Alfred Hellmuth Andersch was a German writer, publisher, and radio editor. The son of a conservative East Prussian army officer, he was born in Munich, Germany and died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland...

. Uniquely, Halbzeit (Half-time by Martin Walser

Martin Walser

At first the speech did not cause a great stir. Indeed, the audience present in Church of St. Paul received the speech with applause, though Walser's critic Ignatz Bubis did not applaud, as confirmed by television footage of the event...

), was cut into unequal halves and hung in a deeply-recessed picture frame.

Expansion of the series

In 1970 the series was expanded to include magazines; Quick

Quick

Quick may refer to:* Quick , an American automobile* Quick , an 1993 American film* Quick , a 2011 South Korean film* Quick , a defunct weekly tabloid spin-off of The Dallas Morning News in Texas...

, Bunte

Bunte

Bunte is a German weekly magazine; coverage includes celebrity, gossip, news and lifestyle matters. It is published by Bunte Entertainment Verlag GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media....

, Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

and Stern

Stern (magazine)

Stern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...

. These last 25 were manufactured by Editions Rene Block, Berlin, and stuffed into plastic skins rather than intestine.

"If you follow these instructions carefully i shall give you these two sausages to sell and soil and slice and save and save and do whatever else you wish without restriction! so; (don't be or get angry now) get a recipe from a butcher a recipe for sausages and follow this recipe (exactly), so that everything in the recipe that is not MEAT, in the doug or the mass (whatever that's called) included- spices, water, gelatine, onions, garlic etc etc; PUT IT ALL IN, and then in place of meat use the pages of the book!"

Foodstuffs as art

The book was to become the first of a large series of pieces by Roth that used foodstuffs, occasionally preserved, more usually rotting, such as Porträt Carl Laszlo 1963, in which a portrait of a collector is covered in cheese and chocolate, and P.O.TH.A.A.VFB, a self-portrait

Self-portrait

A self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting...

 multiple made of chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 and birdseed, at least one of which was left out on a bird-table, to be eaten by birds.

The most notorious was the Staple Cheese (A Chase) exhibition at the Eugenia Butler Gallery, Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, 1970. This consisted of a series of suitcases filled with cheese, as well as wall mounted cheese intended to drip over a horizontal line below. A different case was opened each day to reveal different states of decay. In less than three weeks, the gallery was 'practically impossible to enter' with prospective viewers having to contend with flies, larvae and maggots as well as the smell. The suitcases remained unsold, and were finally thrown away in the desert by the dealer's husband.

Culmination of the Series: Hegel's Collected Works

The series culminated in 1974 with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...

’s Werke in 20 Banden (Georg Wilhelm Friedrih Hegel’s Work in 20 Volumes), made by the collector Hanns Sohm according to Roth’s instructions. The 20 sausages are hung on two rows on a wooden frame, ‘as in a slaughterhouse.’

Roth would also publish some of the sausage’s recipes, listing the ingredients used, in Gesammelte Werke, (Collected Works) Vol 16.

Some other artist’s books and multiples by Roth

• Kinderbuch, (Children’s Book) 1954 - 57
• Book 1958
• Ideograme, 1959
• Daily Mirror, 1961
• Snow, 1964/1966
• The Copley Book, 1966
• Scheisse, (Shit) 1966
• 246 Little Clouds, 1968
• Ein Taschenzimmer von Diter Rot (A Pocket Room by Diter Rot), 1968
• P.o.TH.A.A.VFB, 1968
• Rabbit-Shit-Rabbit, 1972
• 96 Picadillies, 1977
• Dogs, 1981

External links

• A Critique of Roth's Work Retrieved 04-10-2008
• An excellent timeline of Roth's Career on the Dieter Roth Foundation Online Retrieved 04-10-2008
• Another biography on Artnet 04-10-2008