Dimensions: image: 500 x 700 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Dieter Roth | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This untitled work by Dieter Roth features three diminutive buses receding into a vast dark field. They feel almost like relics. What do you see in this piece? Curator: For me, it’s about the fading of cultural icons. Buses, especially double-deckers, are strong symbols of London, but Roth isolates them, almost like decaying memories. Does the diminishing scale evoke a sense of loss to you? Editor: It does, a bit. It's like these once-powerful symbols are becoming insignificant. Curator: Exactly. Roth is masterfully using visual language to explore how collective memory shifts and diminishes over time. Editor: That's a poignant idea. I'll never look at a London bus the same way again! Curator: Indeed, art reshapes our perception.
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The Piccadillies, published by the Petersburg Press in London, offer a sophisticated example of Roth's complex and inventive print-making techniques. The image was taken from a tourist postcard of Piccadilly Circus (which is reproduced on the reverse of each print). Roth made a lithograph reproduction of the image, which he then overprinted in screenprint, using a range of one to twenty-six colours from his hand-drawn stencils. Successive layers of ink have been allowed to crack on some prints, while the introduction of iron filings provides one sheet with a rich texture. Gallery label, March 2007