Claudia Mesch - Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.

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John Berger Andy Merrifield

Joseph Beuys Claudia Mesch

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Joseph Beuys

Claudia Mesch

REAKTION BOOKS

For Francisco J. Solis

Published by
REAKTION BOOKS LTD
Unit 32, Waterside
4448 Wharf Road
London N1 7UX, UK

www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2017
Copyright Claudia Mesch 2017

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

Page references in the Photo Acknowledgments
match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 9781780237824

Contents

Introduction

This book considers the life, art and performances of Joseph Beuys, the most important and controversial German artist of the late twentieth century. Beuys is undoubtedly the most problematic contemporary artist for post-war and post-reunification Germany. More so than any other artist, his persona and art is tightly interwoven with Germanys fascist past. He has been both canonized and excoriated in the Beuys-biography industry: since his death, more than six separate biographies or self-declared exposs have appeared on the artist, with many appearing in English translation.

Beuys the person continues to generate outrage and repudiation, even as the Federal Republic embarks on a new era as a key member of the European Union. Many Germans simply want to be done with Beuys the person the eternal Hitler youth, as the critic Beat Wyss has called him. Beuys the artist, and the individual artworks that comprise his oeuvre, are usually of lesser interest for laypeople, and even for many art critics. As is generally the case when the non-specialist confronts challenging contemporary art, Beuyss art remains too difficult for many to interpret or affix meaning to beyond the Beuys legend. His sculptures, objects, multiples and performances are ignored or are declared incomprehensible in favour of withering scrutiny or dismissal of Beuyss own statements about art, politics, or much of anything else. And, as during his lifetime Beuys seemed to have been an inexhaustible lecturer, commentator and even conversationalist regarding his own art and world-views, there is a trove of material for debunkers of Beuys the person to work with. For others, the artist and the art are of more interest than the person. Yet Beuys certainly opened himself to the biographical slant many informed viewers attribute to his work, as for a time he emphasized the centrality of what he called his own key experiences to the understanding of his art. In addition to the by-now clichd materials of fat and felt that Beuys loaded with resonances of his legend and that he used widely in his oeuvre, numerous Beuys artworks are autobiographical in content in that they deal with the key experiences he described. The most fantastic of these, his self-woven legend of rescue and redemption, still strikes many as a highly inappropriate or offensive fantasy, or even an outright lie, located as it is in the harrowing context of the Second World War as it was lived by a German soldier or Nazi. Some suggest he merely lifted his legend from the pages of Karl May or that he plagiarized many of his artworks from other artists. The desire to expose the true Beuys is shared by many of his biographers and critics and has contributed to Beuyss afterlife.

Praise for Beuyss artwork is relatively recent. Few major institutions of art, and few influential individuals in the art world, took Beuys and his art seriously during his own lifetime. Another reason for this lag in understanding is the breadth and complexity of Beuyss artistic activities. This complexity has necessitated that scholars and curators take years to work their way through it. Beuys was a disparate intellect who worked in an anti-modern fashion across seemingly unrelated fields of art, science and spirituality. Beuyss concerns seemed scattered and appeared to change over the decades of his activity, which may have been misunderstood as indications of indecision or inconsistency.

Even as he became an international media icon by the late 1970s, Beuys continued to be subject to an unprecedented level of hostility from West German officials and from the public, which culminated in actual physical violence against his person. Several decisive moments in Beuyss career evidence the physical violence and other extreme measures that were directed towards Beuys the artist during his career in West Germany: the physical attacks upon his person that took place in a 1964 Aachen performance, and again in 1969 in West Berlin, and finally, his dismissal from a tenured academic post at the Kunstakademie Dsseldorf in 1972. (Beuys sued the state after this dismissal; he won the lawsuit and was reinstated in 1978.)