Beuys

Joseph Beuys
Multiples

Joseph Beuys (1921 - 1986) is one of the most influential 20th century artists. Charismatic and controversial, he dedicated most of his creative energy to ritual actions and teaching and influenced the art scene more than any other German artist after the Second World War. He was also involved with the Fluxus movement, an important source of avant-garde tendencies in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. He introduced the notion of "expanded concept of art," which later translated into "social sculpture." His artistic work was crucially impacted by a wartime experience: after his plane crashed in the Crimea he was allegedly found unconscious in the snow by Tartar nomads who nursed him for eight days (lathering his wounds with animal fat and wrapping him in felt); fat and felt became Beuys' signature sculptural materials. The experience of pain and suffering is reflected in all his works, regardless of the media, from performances, art objects, sculptures, to multiples.

The Arteast 2000+ collection includes five of Beuys' multiples. By definition, a multiple is one of a series of identical objects. Or as the collector Wolfgang Feelisch put it: "A multiple is a product. It is not a reproduction like in printing. There is no 'original' to copy. In addition to being made in series, multiples are about the concept, or, by analogy to industrial production, about a program that is realized as an object."

Two Fräulein with Shining Bread, 1966
collage, offset, chocolate, oil paint, cardboard, white notepaper

Beuys' own interpretation of this work was: "The bread in the title appears only as a word, its role is assumed by chocolate coated with brown paint." The shining bread is transformed in the spirit. Beuys is here alluding to the Christian ritual of transforming bread and wine: "The method is basically the same as in transubstantiation (changing one substance into another). In this case, it only appears to be bread, while actually it is Jesus."

Intuition, 1968
wooden box, pencil line

Intuition is a wooden box, containing a pencil inscription by the artist and a thin line with end markings which symbolizes discursive thought. Another line, with an end marking only on the right, runs unrestricted toward the left, that is, eastward, and symbolizes intuition. According to Beuys, spiritual enlightenment is characteristic of great religions and comes from the East. The Intuition multiple was made in an edition of over 10,000. In this way Beuys realized his idea of disseminating the physical vehicles of his ideas/objects, which directly link the artist and the recipient, while conceptually this harmonizes with Beuys? ideas of democracy and of excluding the mediation of a museum or store.

Silence, 1973
5 galvanised reels of Ingmar Bergman's 35 mm film Silence (1962)

In some Beuys' objects and actions sound and silence are interrelated and represent the physical and spiritual worlds. The artist mechanically silenced the soundtrack of Bergman?s film by dipping the celluloid in a bath of copper and zinc (by galvanizing it). He gave each film reel a different title.

Show Your Wound, 1977
fotografski negativi, oljna barva, steklo, železen okvir / photographic negatives, oil paint, glass, iron frame

Like felt and fat, wounds are constants in Beuys? oeuvre, but not in a negative sense; they have the positive connotation of regeneration. The title Show Your Wound dates to the time of Beuys' Auschwitz memorial designs and shamanic drawings (1950). This multiple derives from one of Beuys' most pessimistic installations, put up in a pedestrian underpass in Munich in 1978 after a serious illness. Two used autopsy slabs from a pathology laboratory are associative of a morgue. The installation also included zinc dishes slathered with fat and containing thermometers.

In Memoriam George Maciunas, 1978
wooden box, felt object, wooden xylophone by Nam June Paik

This multiple was made as a result of the concert in memory of George Maciunas, a founder of Fluxus and its long-time leader and coordinator. The concert was organized by René Block and staged by Jospeh Beuys and Nam June Paik, both prominent members of Fluxus, at the State Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf in July 1978. They played on two pianos (Beuys had played on the same piano at the Fluxus festival in 1963) for 74 minutes (the reverse number of Maciunas' years when he died). The felt object was what Beuys put under one of the piano legs. The other object, made by Nam June Paik, is an archaic sort of xylophone. This was Paik?s way of alluding to Beuys' concept of music: in all their actions that involved music, Beuys continuously improvised. The motto for improvising was written on a small blackboard.

Adela Železnik