fusion of word art and visual art
October 31st was Visual Arts Day, and on that occasion the exhibition Dada Dieter Dúr – A Fusion of Word Art and Visual Art was opened at the museum.
Dadaism emerged in Switzerland in 1915. Dada was an explosion in art, literature, and other disciplines. World War I was largely forgotten, and all accepted traditions were challenged, random text became poetry, clippings and trash became art.
About 40 years later, a Swiss artist who had grown up with Dada and Concrete Art came to Iceland. He sometimes called himself Diderot but his name was Dieter Roth. He met an Icelandic woman, Sigríður Björnsdóttir, and they began working on books together. Dieter met Einar Bragi and they founded the publishing house ed, which published books. Dieter cut and pasted various publications together, no matter which way the font was turned. He bound these and numbered them as books after himself. Several of these books are in the exhibition, including the magazine Tímarit fyrir allt (1975-1987), which was published nine times and all but one of the editions are owned by the National Library of Iceland. Dieter Roth had a great influence on both Icelandic visual art and poetry, as well as printmaking.
Small publishing houses emerged after 1960 when polygraphy became accessible and inexpensive. Poets and artists published their own material and experimented with layout and printing in the spirit of Dadaism and Dieter Roth. Publishing groups and micro-publishers such as Lystræningjann, Medúsa, Smekkleysa, Nýhil, Útúrdúr and Meðgönguljóð have published a number of books and poetry collections that contain experiments with the fusion of word art and visual art.
The exhibition was in collaboration with Icelandic Art Day, http://dagurmyndlistar.is/2015/10/25/landsbokasafn-islands-haskolabokasafn/
and lasted until December 6. Supervised by Vigdís Rún Jónsdóttir, an art history student at the University of Iceland, Áslaug Agnarsdóttir, Ólafur J. Engilbertsson and Kim Farah Giuliani.