Conceptual Activism: Beuys Now
John Zotos
Joseph Beuys, Earthquake, 1981. Enviornment consisting of typesetting machine; Italian flag, felt, nine blackboards with chalk drawings and diagrams, metal container with fat and lead type, cassette recorder with tape and brochure. Overall dim: 80×137 3/4x 193 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York.
The mythic, iconic figure, Joseph Beuys has waited over twenty years for a retrospective in the United States with only one venue, the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. Overseas in London, the Tate Modern will be the second and last stop of an engaging and timely show that asks almost as much of the viewer as Beuys himself asked of his peers, students, fans, and society at large.
Well known as a proponent of a spiritual performance aesthetic, Beuys staged several events using ritualized props of his own making which he saw not as props in a traditional theatrical sense, but as talismanic, alchemical, and transformative objects. He saw himself as an artist/shaman figure with the goal (echoing Artaud) of creating a spiritual experience in the audience, as much as in the performer. His works were geared to spark awareness of global/political issues that point toward hegemonic power relations that hinder and oppress an unfortunately dormant democratic and revolutionary sensibility. And through these works, he strove to foster social change.
While Beuys’ performances may seem to suggest a rejection of the notion of art objects created for an art market, he fabricated multiples based on some of the objects and environments he created. He left a legacy of not only filmed events, but objects and arrangements that take on a conceptual significance. Beuys the sculptor found art and expression possible through the use of everyday, mundane articles from life, positioning them in new contexts and infusing them with new meanings.
At the entrance to the exhibition, a continuous loop projection of several films sets the stage for an appreciation of pieces in the gallery space which houses the performance objects, vitrines and installation environments. A contemporary audience that may or may not know Beuys’ work could conceivably experience the show as an attempt to ask the same questions of our society and political situation now as he did for his generation. Consider for evaluation three objects in the show: they are different in that one is a photograph, another is a found object sculpture, and the third is a gallery installation. And yet each references revolutionary politics and is particular to the show at the Menil and will not travel to the Tate.
In Rose for Direct Democracy (Rose fur direkte Demokratie), 1973, Beuys placed a red rose in a 500 ml graduated cylinder full of water. During the 1972 Documenta V, he participated in the fair where for one hundred days he engaged in artistic/political discussions while carrying a version of this sculpture. His work, like his performances, is a call to action. The rose becomes symbolic of his desire for true democracy. 1972 was an election year in the United States, the war in Vietnam was far from over. The rose suggests Beuys’ position on the lack of democratic or humanitarian concerns on the part of the government that was running for re-election. In our current historical context the Rose for Direct Democracy suggests that the viewer should question the validity of using the terms democracy and U.S. military as synonymous, re-inscribing the latter as a hindrance to the former, denying democracy to those it claims to protect.
We Are the Revolution (La rivoluzione siamo Noi), 1972, the most recognizable of the three images, is a sepia toned large-scale photograph of Beuys, seemingly walking straight at the camera. His gaze fixed forward, body in mid stride, the artist is the nomadic traveller whose action embodies the potential for change. A caption with the photographs’ title can be found inscribed at the lower right. The "we" suggests that the potential for change is universal, and even in the face of adversity must be a guiding principle. Again, the historical context is that of the 1972 election year and the multiple struggles challenging the world of the time. Currently, a visitor to the exhibition may question what part they have to play in world events; the issues are as timely now as they were then. A comparison to the Uncle Sam army recruiting poster I Want You!, 1917, makes Beuys’ image look like an antidote to the seductive advertising rhetoric at the service of the military. His propaganda poster counters large-scale attempts at army recruiting taking place now, by a sensibility that replaces the desire for a killing machine with the hope of a new humanism.
In the installation Earthquake (Terremoto), 1981, Beuys used the printing press of a leftist group, Lotta Continua, which he placed in the gallery flanked by text-covered chalkboards; the keys of the typeset machine were covered with his symbolic wax-fat material, some parts wrapped in felt. Today, it is not difficult to imagine the symbolic weight of this piece: artist yearning for a newly energized leftist journalism; an outcry against the U.S. government, which has inplemented toward censorship and faith-based platforms that seek to dictate cultural policy. For Beuys, the felt and fat provide curative, healing properties that he juxtaposes with the free press, informed by the didactic chalkboards he used in several action-performances.
Beuys could not be more relevant at this particular moment in history, given the incendiary political environment that permeates our lives. As a teacher and as an inspiration, his work created the conditions for the contemporary arena both within and outside Germany. The approach artists like Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst, and Wolfgang Laib take toward objects and installation art confronts Beuys and his ideas.
Joseph Beuys, "Actions, Vitrines, Environments" at The Menil Collection, Houston. October 8, 2004-January 2, 2005.
