This research project, the second part of a work dealing with the prints and books of the Swiss artist Dieter Roth,
focuses on the so-called artist`s book. While the first part of the project was limited to the artist`s prints and books
until 1978, the main emphasis of this paper is on his books from the late 1970s until his death in 1998. A
bibliography of his Copybooks (Kopierbücher) now exists which, in combination with an anthology of his writings,
the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) from the 1970s, allows an overview of Roth`s artist books and book
objects.
The very specific form and metamorphosis of the book can be defined as the nucleus of the artist`s oeuvre. From
1955/56 on until his death, the artist made such a large number of artist`s books that they can be said to be the
backbone of his entire oeuvre.
Through an analysis of the role played by the book in Roth`s work, both as an accumulation of material and as a
medium for describing or documenting the self, this research project describes the exceptional significance of
Roth`s performative, process-oriented approach. Only a radical definition of the artist`s subject within a processual
matrix of space and time, which materialized in Roth`s dynamic material accumulations from 1970 on, makes his
late masterpieces titled Table Ruins (Tischruine), Single Scenes (Soloscenen) and his Mold Museum
(Schimmelmuseum) understandable.
Based on the transformative aspect of the book, this paper lends for the first time a theoretical perspective on the
performance, which places the process and the art work in the center and gives an insight into the artist`s mature
central work made between 1965 and 1998-the year of his death.