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1
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Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)

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2
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Freedom, Democracy, Socialism, 1974

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3
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Fat Chair, 1963 with this work Beuys opened up the artword to a vocabulary of unaesthetic materials

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4
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Joseph Beuys, “Creativity = Capital” (1983), lithograph.

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5
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Beuys, How To Explain Pictures to A Dead Hare, 1965

Performed in a Dusseldorf Gallery where he sat in a bare room surrounded by felt, fat wire and wood dealing with the unaesthetic subject of death.

He walked around the gallery with his face smeared with honey and covered in gold leaf, as he explained pictures to a dead hare.

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.

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6
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Beuys, The Pack, 1969

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7
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Beuys, Felt Suit, 1970

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8
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Beuys, I Love America and America Loves Me (Coyote), 1974

  • Traveled to the United States, performed at the René Block Gallery in NY
  • Began at Kennedy Airport, friends wrapped him in felt and transported him to the gallery in an ambulance. He spent several days in a room with only a felt blanket, a flashlight, a cane that looked like a shepherd’s staff, copies of the Wall Street Journal (which were delivered daily), and a live coyote.
  • His choice of employing a coyote was perhaps an acknowledgment of an animal that holds great spiritual significance for Native Americans.
  • More than telling the United States that it, too, had its own historical genocide, his performance was about communication and living in nature harmoniously. He was a committed environmentalist, and beginning in the mid-1970s, Beuys increasingly used his actions as a forum for his political and environmental beliefs.
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9
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Beuys, Cosmos and Damian, 1974,

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10
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Honey Pump at the Workplace for Documenta 6

  • Beuys built a machine out of two ships engines (the propulsive heart)
  • 100 kg of margarine (calories necessary for the development of energy)
  • and two tons of honey (representing the blood that must circulate in the organism).
  • He organized 100 days of the free International University with discussions utilizing blackboards, graphics, microphones, press communications and recordings as an organic extension of Honeypump
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11
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Three Pots for the Poorhouse

  • This performance and the resulting work is the record or embodiment of an ‘Action’ performed by Joseph Beuys in the dilapidated, former Edinburgh poorhouse in June 1974.
  • Beuys used three old cooking pots to represent the human attribute of thinking, feeling and will.
  • He walked slowly around the edges of one of the rooms, touching the walls, and offering up the pots one by one, to each of the walls.
  • The pots were then put on the floor and tied to a pair of blackboards on which Beuys drew diagrams and works relating to the ‘Action’.
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12
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Beuys, We are the Revolution, 1972

  • The multiple print, We are the Revolution, recalls Beuys’ proclamation that “Art is the only revolutionary force.“
  • In this work, the artist seems to stride boldly into the future, urging us to accompany him on his way to the revolution.
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13
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Beuys, Eurasia, Syberian Symphony, 1966

  • The term “Eurasia” appears often in the titles of Beuys’ works. The word is a geographical designation for the land mass that has been separated, in modern times, into Europe and Asia. Beuys used it to refer to a state of spiritual integration between “Western Man” and “Eastern Man,” which represented for him the extremes of analytic thought and intuitive thought.
  • He drew many of his ideas from the writings of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of anthroposophy, who wrote that Western Man could only contribute to the progress of humanity when he gave up his dependence on “proofs” in favor of “the unfathomable dreams of truth.”
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14
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7,000 oaks

•Beuys said that planting oak trees is not only an achievement of urgent necessity to the biosphere and to the pure matter of ecological coherence, but demonstrates a much wider understanding of the ecological idea, which should increase more and more while years go by. It is our intention to proceed with this activity continuously

•.For the present the planting of the 7000 Oaks is a symbolic beginning. For the symbolic take off I do need a “boundary-stone,” in this case represented by a column of basalt. Since the action should yield to a complete modification of the way of life as well as to the reorganization of human society and to the whole ecological environment…”
- Joseph Beuys

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15
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Joseph Beuys, Lightning with Stag in its Glare (Blitzschlag Mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch), 1985. Aluminum, bronze, and iron, thirty-nine elements, dimensions variable

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16
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Joseph Beuys,Tram Stop, 1976

  • Beuys made the first version of Tram Stop when he was selected to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1976.
  • The German Pavilion had been built during the Nazi era, and Beuys was very conscious of its associations when he chose to make a monument to peace out of the discarded weapons of war.
  • The installation consisted of a cast of the original monument in iron, as well as a stretch of tram-line. However, Beuys added a screaming head, a symbol of anguish. The head is thought to be based on Anacharsis Cloots, one of the most radical and eccentric figures of the French Revolution, who ultimately went to the guillotine himself. Cloots had lived near Cleves, Beuys’ hometown and, like the monument, belonged to the landscape of Beuys’s childhood.
  • When Tram Stop was acquired by a Dutch museum, Beuys indicated that it should henceforth be installed as a series of isolated elements placed on the floor, without any attempt to replicate the vertical appearance of the original monument.
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17
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Kukei,akopee, no! , Aachen, July 20, 1964

•Right-wing students stormed the stage to put a violent end to Beuys’ provocative Fluxus performance. “His reaction was to strike a pose by raising his arm in a Roman salute and holding up a crucifix to the audience…Beuys fell back on a gesture of authority.”

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18
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Joseph Beuys, The Chief –Fluxus Chant, July 1964, Rene Block Gallery, Berlin, 8 hour performance equal to a working day

•Rolled up in a felt blanket, Beuys made inarticulate sounds into a microphone, amplified by loudspeaker into the gallery. Two dead hares lay at either end, indicating a ritual space. Present and absent, since he was there but invisible and untouchable, this work is auratic.

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19
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Joseph Beuys, Capri Battery, 1985

  • One of his most lighthearted multiples is Capri Battery (1985), a yellow lightbulb in a portable socket that is “plugged into” a lemon.
  • Beuys made it during the last year of his life while he was recovering from a lung ailment on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Electricity seems to flow from the fruit, lighting up the bulb and producing a curative “charge” for Beuys’ own weakened system.
  • With its bright yellow color alluding to the sunny landscape of southern Italy, the battery suggests that a marriage of art, science, and nature can nourish and heal an ailing culture (or individual) with an almost magical energy.
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