Special Joseph Beuys Edition!
Crambe Repetita #176
Welcome to a (mostly daily) newsletter of recommendations from Todd L. Burns. In every email, I suggest some things that I find interesting. Maybe you will too… Today, my wonderful wife, Dr. Andrea Gyorody, takes over the newsletter yet again. This time, I asked her to put together a few links celebrating the fascinating German artist Joseph Beuys.
Before she begins, though, here are three of my favorite Beuys pieces: Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano (AKA the one where he wraps a piano in felt), Office of the Organization for Direct Democracy by Referendum (AKA the performance that ends with a boxing match), Felt Suit (AKA the one where the curator gets to hang a felt suit anywhere they want).
Unless you're German, or an art historian, or a person very interested in modern and contemporary art, the name Joseph Beuys probably means little (or nothing) to you. Far less famous in the States than he is in Germany, and less well known here than, say, Gerhard Richter, Beuys was one of the most important European artists of the 20th century.
His life story maps onto the Fatherland's traumatic history: a member of the Hitler Youth as a child, he went on to serve in the Luftwaffe during World War II, was shot down over Crimea, spent time as a POW before returning to Germany, attended art school in Düsseldorf (where he later became a controversial professor), survived a nervous breakdown, and went on to superstardom in the 60s and 70s art scene, particularly as it intersected with various forms of liberal politics, including the student movement, anti-nuclear weapons activism, and the nascent Green party.
His work was mythological, biographical, philosophical, and full of contradiction, being somehow both didactic and enigmatic, and conceptual and intensely material at the same time. It's not remotely possible to capture any of that complexity in a newsletter (no offense, husband), but below is a smattering of entertaining tidbits that might pique your interest.
Watch
Four years before he died of heart failure, Beuys recorded this TV spot singing an anti-Ronald Reagan tune. The title "Sonne statt Reagan," when said aloud in German, means "sun instead of rain." You see what he did there. It's also worth noting that he's wearing his signature uniform: Stetson hat, jeans, fisherman's vest.
Read
I love this telling of Beuys's falsified crash story (which has been the subject of much debate) as it informs the tale of one of his best known performances, "I Like America and America Likes Me," carried out alongside a coyote named Little John in New York in 1974. And here's one fun fact I can add, a by-product of my dissertation research that never met the page: when Beuys returned to Germany, he tried to adopt Little John. Sadly, US law prohibits the export of coyotes.
Look
Beuys and Family Watching Star Trek
The stars, they're just like us!
Well, when they're not shooting ads for Japanese whisky companies in order to fund a massive tree-planting effort.