Dieter Roth - Mundunculum - 1967 [3431-BK]

The poem and the etching titled "mein Auge ist ein Mund" (my eye is a mouth) are parts of Mundunculum, Dieter Roth's magnum opus, in which the artist makes a pointedly futile attempt to develop a systematic structure—a narrative and pictorial syntax—that is valid for him. Drawings and poetry formulate a metaphor of the coveted ideal work; Roth expresses the desire to fuse eye and mouth, thinking and speaking, to form a naturally bubbling spring of creative work. This would be a state of Utopia, but, for Roth especially, Utopia always meets with a high degree of uncertainty and self-doubt. Roth developed a pictorial alphabet consisting of 23 stamps and then utilized it as the basic material for numerous texts, drawings and assemblages. Inscribed to Jons Hjalmarsson and dated August 67.