Dieter Roth's Box of Chocolate

February 13, 2009

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Dieter Roth, Chocolate Lion Tower, left foreground

Dieter Roth's Chocolate Lion Tower (1968–69) is featured in Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures. You can smell it before you see it—a rare moment in art in which the nose is privileged before the eyes. Chocolate Lion Tower is comprised of 252 chocolate objects which, perhaps much to conservators' chagrin, are allowed to decay, flaunting conventions of both materials and content. For the exhibition, the Roth estate fabricated a copy that will decompose during the year the show travels.

Allison Agsten