Sunday, October 18, 2015

Joseph Beuys

I really admire Joseph Beuys for his incredibly thoughtful and enigmatic actions. Goldberg makes a distinction between the aggressive, outwardly-motivated artists of the 60s, and those who worked more introspectively, “to capture the ‘spirit’ of the artist as an energetic and catalytic force in society.” (144) Of the three artists she names from the latter group, Beuys is the only artist who did not subject others’ (women’s) bodies to the artistic process in order to achieve emancipation of the ‘spirit’. In so doing, the other two artists, Klein and Manzoni, had created and held a palpable bond of control over these bodies as catalysts, and, especially in the case of Klein, did so in front of a passive, one could even say voyeuristic, audience to further establish this bond. (145-6)
Instead, by subjecting his own body to the arduous process for the sake of bringing awareness to his idea of the “emancipation of the ‘spirit’,” I believe that Beuys expresses a magnitude of humility comparable to the work of later performance artists, namely that of Marina Abramović. Goldberg quotes Beuys as saying, ‘We have to revolutionize human thought. First of all revolution takes place within man. When man is really a free, creative being who can produce something new and original, he can revolutionize time.’ (149)
Abramović has reenacted Beuys’ How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, and she refers to the artist, in this way, as a shaman. “The artist has not only to develop his physical body, but also his mental body. He has to have some sort of spiritual connection to the public and his own work. That generates a strong aura. And [Beuys] had a strong aura.” She continues by explaining how it was not necessary for Beuys to acknowledge his own presence in his performances, because he had the ability to infuse them (i.e., the material within the performance) with his energy.

https://youtu.be/3CEaikCITEM

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