Beuys

Joseph Beuys  1921–1986  photo ©Elsewhere

    A brief reflection on another hero of mine, Joseph Beuys. This enigmatic and problematic artist with a self-proclaimed mythology was a member of the Fluxus Group and founder of The Free International University.
    If you don't know of him or his work, it is pretty much a certainty that you won't have been to art college in the Sixties or Seventies. The strange thing is, I can't pin down exactly why I find the man significant to me. Certainly, he had an undeniable personal charisma; this leading in part to his critics deriding him as messianic and for some, fascistic. Both imputations have in recent years been confounded by revelations of theoretical work and projects of his, hitherto undiscovered, which show quite the opposite.
    His work also is not easy to categorise, understand or even like in any normal, accepted aesthetic sense of the word. It challenges the observer to interpret - no, more than that - to think beyond the outward apparentness of either his performance pieces or his theatrical, sculptural installations. My take is that he operated on a similar plane as the myths, legends and fairy tales that make up much of our culture, alluding to something fundamental, radical and altogether human. A politics and a philosophical/ethical framework on our scale rather than society's. Check him out online - there's a wealth of stuff out there. But you need to see his installations in the round to appreciate them - I'm not sure what's out there now, if anything. As to the performance pieces, he's obviously no longer around to perform but there's ample documentation and film available to all.