Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys (pronounced "boyce") (May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986) was a German Conceptual artist who produced work in a number of forms including sculpture, performance art, video art and installations. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential European artists of the second half of the 20th century.

Early life

Beuys was born in Krefeld but grew up mainly in two nearby towns, Kleve and Rindern. He had some contact with art, visiting the studio of Achilles Moortgat (1881-1957) on a number of occasions, but decided to pursue a career in medicine. About 1936 Beuys joined the Hitler Youth, commenting later in his life: "everyone went to church, and everyone went to the Hitler Youth." With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Luftwaffe as a volunteer, where he became a Stuka (JU 87) radio operator after having been trained by Heinz Sielman, later to become a famous film-maker of wildlife documentaries in West Germany.

Beuys was shot down while flying over the Crimea on May 16, 1944, and was injured. Within a few days (or even the following day), he was treated in a German field hospital (Feldlazarett 179) for two weeks. Later in life, Beuys recounted that he had been rescued by nomad Tatars, who kept him warm by covering him with fat and wrapping him in felt, thus saving his life. As Joan Rothfuss of the Walker Art Center writes, "While the story appears to have little grounding in real events (Beuys himself downplayed its importance in a 1980 interview), its poetics are strong enough to have made the story one of the most enduring aspects of his mythic biography."^*

After he recovered from the injuries he fought as a paratrooper (Fallschirmjäger) in western Germany and received several military awards, including the Iron Cross (Second and First Class) and the golden Wound Badge. In the last days of the war he was taken prisoner by British troops. In August 1945 he was able to return to his parents in Kleve.

He began to read Rudolf Steiner (the founder of Anthroposophy), started to paint small watercolors and learned some skills from the local artists Hans Lamers and Walter Bruex. In 1947 he began his studies at the Art Academy (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) of Düsseldorf.

Development as artist

Following the war, Beuys concentrated on art, and studied at the academy in Düsseldorf from 1946 to 1951. For most of the 1950s he concentrated mainly on drawing. In 1961 he became professor of sculpture there, but was dismissed from his post in 1972 after he insisted that his classes must be open to anybody who wanted to take them. His students protested, and he was allowed to keep his studio there, but still lost his job.

In 1962, Beuys became briefly associated with the Fluxus movement, and the multi-disciplinary works of that group, which drew together art, music and literature. This seems to have pushed his work in a new, more performance-led direction. He moved away from drawing toward performance art motivated by his belief that art has a larger role to play in society.

Work

Among Beuys' better known works are Felt Suit (1970), a felt suit exhibited on a coat hanger; the performance piece Coyote, "I Like America and America Likes Me" (1974), for which Beuys wrapped himself in felt and stayed in a room with a coyote for five days; and the sculpture Fat Corner, which is fat piled into the corner of a gallery space.

Perhaps Beuys' most famous performance work is How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), in which he walked around a gallery with his face smeared with honey and covered in gold leaf, carrying a dead hare to whom he talked, explaining the pictures before them. The audience for this performance was kept outside, only able to see the goings on from behind a clear screen. Beuys said the work was concerned with issues such as human and animal consciousness, and the problems of thought and language.

In his life work Beuys tried to overcome (western) materialism by combining it with (eastern) spirituality. In his synthesis of the arts (Gesamtkunstwerk) he even used the Berlin wall as a piece of art. By throwing a Blood sausage over the concrete wall (from West to East Germany), he tried to unify the nation symbolically.

In 1979, a large retrospective of Beuys' work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City cemented his reputation as one of the most important artists of his time. In 1982 Beuys began his piece 7,000 Oaks, for Documenta 7, planting 7,000 Oak trees in the German city of (Kassel) Kassel. He died in 1986 in Düsseldorf.

Politics

Beuys' affinity with the anthroposophic philosophy, developed largely by Rudolph Steiner, is well documented. Anthroposophic ideas inform Beuys' political theory of a democratic, artistically and spiritually motivated society. Beuys believed society to be one great artistic whole and saw The artist as having a key role in giving human society meaning and spiritual depth.

After the war Beuys became a pacifist. At the parliament Bundestag elections in 1976 he was a candidate of the party "Aktionsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Deutscher" ^* (AUD) (Campaign Coalition of Independent Germans). At the centre of their program was a unification of the two German states as a neutral country (therefore rejecting both NATO and the Eastern Bloc). They also promoted "free culture", "free schools and universities that are independent of the state" and "the introduction of petitions and referenda." Quotes from the "Archiv Gruenes Gedeaechtnis" of the "Heinrich-Boell-Foundation" in Berlin. Taken from a pamphlet by Joseph Beuys for the 1976 Federal elections This small organisation joined the new founded Green Party (German Greens), in 1979 and Beuys stood for election as a Green Party European Parliament candidate, but they failed to get the %5 needed to gain representation. In the Bundestag election of October 1980, Beuys was the leading candidate on the Green Party list for North Rhine-Westphalia, but with only 1.5% it was not enough to enter parliament. Beuys continued to work with the Greens through televison debates, events and campaigns.

Beuys was a particularly prominent protester against new nuclear weapons (Pershing II-missiles) in Western Germany in 1983, following the SALT II treaty from 1979. He even performed on an anti-nuclear pop song with the popular German rock group BAP, "Sonne statt Reagan" (Sun not Reagen/Rain).

One of his best-known phrases is "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler" ("Everyone is an artist").

Exhibitions

1964 documenta, Kassel, Germany

1972 documenta, Kassel, Germany

1976 Venice Biennale, Italy

1979 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA

1984 Seibu-Museum, Tokio, Japan

2006 Museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Literature

Buchloh, Benjamin H.D./Krauss, Rosalind/Michelson, Annette: "Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim", in: October, 12, Frühjahr 1980, pp 3-21
Kuoni, Carin, editor: "Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man," Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1990
Moffitt, John Francis: "Occultism in Avant-Garde Art. The Case of Joseph Beuys", Studies in the Fine Arts - The Avant-Garde, No.63, Michigan/London 1988
Ray, Gene: "The use and abuse of the sublime: Joseph Beuys and art after Auschwitz", Diss.phil., University of Miami, Miami 1997
Tisdall, Caroline: "Joseph Beuys", London 1979

References

External links

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