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3 1293 016943

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

JOSEPH BEUYS:
THE MULTIPLES AS IDENTITY

presented by

Ayako Yamada

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

MA History of Art

degree in

 

 

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\
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Date 3 ' '20 “ ‘l%

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

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Michigan State

Unlverslty

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX

to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.

 

DATE DUE

DATE DUE

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1M mm14

 

JOSEPH BEUYS:
THE MULTIPLES AS IDENTITY

By

Ayako Yamada

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1997

ABSTRACT

JOSEPH BEUYS: THE MULTIPLES AS IDENTITY

By

Ayako Yamada

Focusing on Beuys’ multiple productions and his identity, I examine how he
created the important arenas of strategic intervention of his identity and persona,
including his experience during World War II. Beuys’ multiples function as a record and
autobiographical voice of the artist’s activities, and provide the paradigm for self-
managed retrospectives by fusing life and art, and by making autobiography into art. The
importance of Beuys’ commitment to multiples is consistent with the identity he tried to
create in his wok and in his life. Through the study of multiples the important strands

can reveal his myth-creating and his creation of his own identity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge all the intellectual debts I have incurred from
Professor Laura Cloud and Professor Raymond Silverman, who served as my committee
and gave freely of their time and ideas. I am sincerely indebted to them. However, most
substantial debts are to Professor Phylis Floyd, whose interest, encouragement and

thoughtful supervision helped me shape this thesis.

I would like to thank Dr. Felice Fischer and Dr. Ann Temkin of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, for sharing their knowledge of Joseph Beuys and his identity. Special
thanks are due to Dr. Kenneth Haltman for “a clue” he gave to the thesis, and to Mr.

David Mosher for his encouragement for my writing.

To my friends, Martha, Dina, and Karen, 1 want to give special thanks for their

encouragement and kindness that buttressed my studies and intellectual development.

Finally, my warmest thanks must be reserved for my family, who always

wholeheartedly supported and encouraged my study in Art History.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

 

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

 

CHAPTER 2
Joseph Beuys Multiples: Overview

 

CHAPTER 3
The Photographic Images in Beuys’ Multiples

CHAPTER 4
The Idea of Politics in the Multiples

CHAPTER 5
Conclusion

11

37

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

iv

58

81

85

Figure l_Marcel Duchamp Rrose Se’lavy

LIST OF FIGURES

7
Figure 2_Marcel Duchamp Box-in-a- Valise: Series A 1941—8

Figure 3___Joseph Beuys

Figure 4_Joseph Beuys
Figure 5_Joseph Beuys
Figure 6_Gunter Weseler
Figure 7_Iwao Kagoshima

Figure 8_John Cage

Figure 9_Joseph Beuys

Figure 10__.Ioseph Beuys

Figure 11_Joseph Beuys
Figure 12_Joseph Beuys
Figure l3_Joseph Beuys
Figure 14_Joseph Beuys
Figure 15_Joseph Beuys

Figure 16_Joseph Beuys during an action

Figure 17_Joseph Beuys

Figure 18_Joseph Beuys

Figure l9_Joseph Beuys
Figure 20_Joseph Beuys

Figure 2 l_Joseph Beuys from Eurasian Stafl

Figure 22_Joseph Beuys
Figure 23_Joseph Beuys

Figure 24_Joseph Beuys

Figure 25_Joseph Beuys

Figure 26_Joseph Beuys
Figure 27_Joseph Beuys

Figure 28_Joseph Beuys

Figure 29__Joseph Beuys

Figure 30_Joseph Beuys

 

 

Felt Suit l970_9
Intuition... instead ofa cookbook _l 968— l O

 

 

Capri Battery 1985—26
Breathing Object in Cage 1969—27
Stopped Liquid (Cup) 1968—28

Plexigram (from Not Wanting to
say Anything about Marcel Suite)_l 970—29
Buruno Cora- Tee per la Lotta

Continua Vera_ 1 975—30

Postcard: Give me honey 1973—31
La Rivoluzione siamo Noi l972_32
Name equals Address 1974—33

 

Two Frau/ems with shining bread_l966_34

 

 

 

 

 

with Braunkreu: 1966—35
Zeichnungen 1974-5__36
at the “Festival for New Art” l964__51
Tramstop l977__52
Show Your Wound 1977—53
Vacuum H ll/lass 1970—54

 

The Chief / How to Explain

Pictures to a Dead Hare l970_55

 

 

 

 

 

 

1973—5 6
Democracy is merry 1973—5 7
E vervess 11 1968—7]
Blackboard 1 1980—72
Letter from London l977__73
Postcard: Directional Forces 1977—74
Noise/ess Blackboard Eraser 1974—75

 

How the dictatorship

of the parties can be overcome_l97l_76
La Zappa l978_77
Oil Can FIU 1980—78

Figure 31_Joseph Beuys Vino F] U 1983—79
Figure 32_Joseph Beuys K unst —-— ( Iapital (Shem) 1979—80

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

A true autobiography is almost an impossibility... man is bound to lie about himself

- Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground

In 1943, Joseph Beuys, who served as a pilot during World War II, was shot
down in the Crimea. Although his co—pilot was killed, Beuys was miraculously rescued
by a band of nomadic Tartars. They discovered the severely wounded pilot in deep snow
and cured the mostly unconsciously man by swaddling his body in fat and felt. Without

the care of the Tartars, Beuys would never have survived.1

Whenever Beuys’ works and life are discussed, this story remains a central
issue, even afier doubt has been raised about what Beuys’ experience among the Tartars
actually was. Some people have stated that it is “a myth,” invented by Beuys to create
his persona. Others still talk about the story as truth. It may be truth, or it may be a
complete falsehood. Or he might have experienced the plane crash, but it was not as

dramatic as he said.

It is my contention that the story of the plane crash is a complete falsehood.
This is not because, as Benjamin Buchloh argues, debunking the myth is a necessary
beginning to a critique of the work.2 Nor is it because, as Thomas Crow writes, Beuys’
subjectivism and mystical excesses are those of an outdated aesthetic.3 It is important to
review how he faced his own identity in expressing his relationship to the past, to the
present, to society, to the audience, to a particular setting, to a moment.4 Our self-image
and the images we have of others are always to some degree fictional. Thus, rather than
regard Beuys’ “personal myth” as an absolute truth and instead view it as part of a larger
creation, part of his narrative or self-representation, Beuys’ art and other created lives

can be illuminated.

Identity in twentieth century art has been posed increasingly more as a question
than as a fact. Ever since it was raised by Marcel Duchamp in such works as Rrose
Selavy (Figure 1), the question of the artist’s identity (or identities) became critical for
himself, as well as for the culture as a whole. In Beuys’ case, his plane crash anecdote is
strongly connected with the national identity of Germany. Because of the myth and his
shamanistic performance, Beuys has been frequently discussed more as a celebrity rather
than an artist. Nevertheless, his myth-making in connection with his identity must be

discussed in his art, not in the judgment created by his fame as a shaman or star.

 

2 Benjamin Buchloh, “Beuys, The Twilight of the Idol: Preliminary notes for a Critique,”
Aniontm, Jan 1980, 35-43.

3 Thomas Crow, “The Graying of Criticism,” Aztfomm, Sept. 1993, 188.

4 Alfred Kazin, “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography,” in W

“If you have all my multiples, then you have me entirely.” Beuys told a
collector.5 As a group, Beuys’ multiple is like a scrapbook of his life, works, and ideas.
There are photographs and relics of Beuys’ actions, lectures and exhibitions; samples of
his sculptural material such as fat and felt, and prints based on early drawings. Some of
them are souvenirs of his travels. Many of them were made as fund-raisers for his large
scale projects such as the Free International University. When Beuys’ personal myth is
discussed in the context of his commitment to the myth, rather than the question of truth
or untruth, the importance that Beuys attributed to his multiple production can be a clue

for the issue of his identity.

While working as a vehicle for the transmission of Beuys’ own theory and ideas,
the multiples Beuys created were consistent with the identity he tried to create in his
works and in his life. Through a study of the multiples, the important strands can reveal
his myth-creating and his own creation of an identity. Joseph Beuys’ key works are
considered to be his actions, speeches, lectures, and large scale projects such as 7000
oaks, through only a limited number of people witnessed those. Beuys’ multiples
function as a record and an autobiographical voice of the artist’s activities. Judging from

Beuys’ production of multiples, it is not hard to conceive Marcel Duchamp’s multiple

 

BiographerjsAfi, ed. Marc Pachter Mew Republic Books, 197 9) 81.
5 Joseph Beuys’ reported remark to the collector Gunter Ulbricht, quoted in Peter Nisbet,
“In/Tuition: A University Museum Collects Joseph Beuys,” in Who

WW ed Jorg Schellmann (Busch-

Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Walker Art Center and Edition

4

Box-in-a- l/Zilise containing miniatures of all his works, called “a portable museum” by
Duchamp himself (Figure 2).6 Beuys’ multiples provided the indices for self-managed
retrospectives and paved the way for his other works of art by fusing life and art, and by

making autobiography into art.

Joseph Beuys was working during the peak of the multiples movement in the
19605. He created many works, including his famous Felt Suit (1970) (Figure 3) and
Intuition... instead of a cookbook (1968) (Figure 4), the best selling multiple of all time.
Beuys generalized the concept of “multiples” and employed it to mean “art in editions,”
or simply “editions.” He himself liked an open-ended definition of the term “multiple,”
and often reached decisions on an ad hoc basis.7 The multiples includes videos, records,
photographs, and relics of his own actions, lectures, or exhibitions; samples of his
favorite sculptural materials, such as fat, beeswax, copper, and iron and prints based on
early drawings. For the question asking whether a certain object was intended to be a
multiple or not, Beuys not infrequently replied that he would leave that up to the
publisher of the multiple concerned.8 Although Beuys’ multiple objects have been

overshadowed by more famous works such as his perfonnanoe art, Beuys’ identity and

 

Schellmann, 1997), 520.

6 From 01' By Marcel Duchamp or Rose Séla w/Bote-en-valise (1941). Edition 20
examples (NY, 1941); edition 90 ex. (NY, 1941); edition 30 ex. (Paris, 1958); edition 60 ex
(Paris, 1959); edition 100 ex. (Paris/Milan, 1966- 68). For more detail about Duchamp’ 8
multiple production, see i . _ 1:. ..

Ed. Daniel Buchholz and Gregorio Magnarii (Spiral/wacoal Art Center, 1993).

7 J6rg Schellmann, “Editor’s Note” in - - ~ : : - ' -
WM, ed Jorg Schellmarin (Busch- Reisinger Museum, Harvard
University Museums, WalkerArt Center, Edition Schellmann, 1997), 29.

8 Ibid., 29.

 

 

5

the strategies woven by his theory and personal myth are often found in his production
of multiples and his commitment to them. Moreover, the significance of the multiples for
Beuys has to be emphasized, since the total number of Beuys’ multiples — approximately

600 — is an outstanding number among his contemporaries.9

In Chapter 2 of this thesis, I will examine Beuys’ multiple in relation to other
contemporary artists and tradition of his time. Next, the photographic images in his
multiples will be examined. As we see in Arena, one of Beuys’ major installations, the
photographic image is open to enormously rich possibilities of interpretation of his
autobiographical voice, and I will investigate that both Beuys’ position as an artist and
as an isolated hero can be placed within the context of the history of art. Beuys’
multiples also express his activist strategies and show that his idea of politics, like his
entire oeuvre, participated in the formation of the artist’s identity. Beuys asserted that all
human creation has to be art. In this sense, politics is art, he said, not as the “art of the
possible.” By this, he means that with freeing all possible creative forces, society as a
whole can be reconstructed. While stating that “politics has to become art, and art has to

become litics,””’ Beu 5 used his “idea of litics” as one of the most im rtant
P0 y P0 P0

 

9 Hilary Lane, “”To create is divine, to multiply 18 human” (Man Ray)” in M11341;
o '50_ ‘ '00:; Q ”0 [019 1‘th oun_ L‘ _(TheSouthBank
Centre, 1994), 13. According to Lane, multiples had peaked in 1968 to 69, and was
diminishing rapidly. The making of multiples did not start picking up again until 1986.
Also see Gregorio Magnani, “Introduction,” WWW
Duchammheflmsent, ed. Daniel Buchholz and Gregorio Magnani (Spiral/Wacoal Art
Center, 1993), 8.
‘0 Joseph Beuys, “A Public Dialogue New York City,’ in MW
Met 0:” 3i- ‘ QLLLI'J'E ._i1° .0 5.110. i 1. Lu- ,ed. Carin
Kuoni (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990). 37.

6

mediums for his multiple productions. In Chapter 4, the affiliation between “his idea of
politics,” which can also be placed in the German art tradition, and his identity will be

discussed.

Beuys’ multiple production is documentation of his Gestaltung — the putting
into form — and demonstrates the metamorphosis of identity into form. In the subsequent
evolution of his multiples, his plane crash is not about truth or untruth, it is about the

artist’s personal process of self-transformation.

 

Figure! Marcel Duchamp Rrose Sélavy

 

Figure 2 Marcel Duchamp Box-in-a-Valise: SeriesA (I941)

 

Figure3 Joseph Beuys Felt Suit (1970)

10

 

Figure 4 Joseph Beuys Intuition... instead of a cookbook (1968)

CHAPTER 2
The Multiples of Joseph Beuys: Overview

Beuys’ multiples include postcards, posters large and small objects, films, and
LP records. The number in the each edition varies, from a very limited number, such as
Felt TV (1970) with six examples, to unlimited editions, such as Intuition... instead of
cookbook (1968) (Figure 4), and many of his postcard productions. Throughout Beuys’
creation of multiple objects, photographic images, films and sound recordings - created
during the occasions of his actions — were regular practice. In addition, Beuys’ multiples
often recorded not only his art and career, but also his life. Capri Battery (1985) (Figure
5), created during the last year of his life while he was recovering from a lung ailment
on the island of Capri, refers to the last stage of his life. With its bright yellow color, the
electric light bulb “plugged” into a lemon is a multiple loaded with powerful references
to the important concepts in his sculpture: “the generation of energy means that
production of warmth and hence the link with social sculpture.”' As the electricity is
energy, flowing form the fruit, and lighting the bulb and produced a curative “charge”

for Beuys’ own weakened system.2

 

‘ Joan Rothfuss. “Energy,” in Josephfiguysflultiples (WalkerArt Center, 1997), no page
number.
2 Ibid.

11

12

A multiple is generally considered an original work of art capable of being
produced in unlimited numbers. However, the definition of multiples has always been a
point of debate, i.e., whether bronze casting and print are multiples. In Beuys’ case,
although the borderlines between multiples and other art forms —- unique pieces or
publication of other kinds — remain indeterminate, he signed and numbered a piece with

his own hand, with the intention of being an edition, a multiple.3

Since a “multiple” is not a category like “painting” or “sculpture,” its definition
is always problematic. When Daniel Spoerri, an early publisher of multiples, created the
first MAT edition in 1959, he stated that multiplication resulted only in the quantitative
dispersal of an idea that was stated finally in the original work.4 The MAT,
Multiplication d’Art Transfonnable, was the first systematic attempt to produce a series
of multiples and multiplication as understood by Spoerri and many artists who began to
produce works in editions during this early period, from the “old masters” such as
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to younger artists such as Jean Tinguely and Bruno
Munari.5 They were concerned with the demythification of the artist and of the work of
art.6 Since then, it seems that the idea of multiples has changed depending on the time,

place, the artists, and function of the art object in the context of the artists’ overall

 

3 Jorg Schellmann, “Editor’s Note,” in T M ' l ' n'
Wis. ed. Jorg Schellmann (Busch- Reisinger Museum, Harvard
University Art Museums, Walker Art Center and Edition Schellmann,1997),29.

“ John Tancock, Wile (Philadelphia Museum ofArt, 1971), no
page number.

3 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

13
aesthetic.

The artists making multiples during the ‘605 and ‘705 are frequently discussed
in terms of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp, who debunked speculation on the
authenticity of “high art.” Challenging the myth of the artist’s originality and the
authenticity of art, Duchamp stated: “Wipe out the idea of the original, which exists
neither in music, nor in poetry...”7 He also said that “the ready-mades were a way of
getting out of the exchangeability, the monetarization of the work of art, which was just
beginning about then. In art, and only in art, the original work is sold, and it acquires a
sort of aura that way. But with my ready-mades, a replica will do just as well.”3 The
legacies of Duchamp — the challenge of the authenticity to the works of art, the notion of
breaking the boundary between art and life, and the assertion that art is for everyone —
are part of Beuys’ activist strategies and strongly supported his commitment to the

production of multiples by means of the use of mass-produced and everyday objects:

My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea
of sculpture, or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what
sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the
invisible materials used by everyone.9

Using objects as agents to convey his “idea,” asserting “everybody is an artist” and
an expanded concept of art,” Beuys spoke of sculpture as an evolutionary process -

social sculpture. His goal was the restructuring of society as a whole:

 

7 Quoted in Tancock, MAW, no page number. “Duchamp did not
appreciate the art of music but he did see a lot to be said for the fact that in music it is

not be original manuscript that counts.”

8 Ibid.

9 Joseph Beuys, “Introduction” in Caroline Tisdall, Josephfluys (Themes and Hudson,
1979), 6.

14

Thinking Forms - how we mold our thoughts or
Spoken Forms - how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE- how we mold and shape the world in

which we live: Sculpture as an
evolutionary process; everyone an artist.'0

Beuys believed that an artist should extend his work and ideas beyond the sphere of
aesthetics, and the limitations of museums and art academies, and that it should
extend to all areas of human activity, whether social, political, economic, or
spiritual. His multiples can be addressed in the course of the theory. They became
works of art which are not for admiration of the skill or for the pleasure it gives the
eye, but “ideas” for sale, which have to be re-made in the mind of anyone with the

inclination to realize the conceptualization.

Nevertheless, if we examine the multiples from the 19605 and 70s, the
artists are still engaged in a search for creativity or uniqueness. Although Walter
Benjamin denied this in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,
which stated that creativity and uniqueness are outmoded concepts, it is impossible
to consider Gunter Weseler’s Breathing Object in Cage, (1969), edition of 50
(Figure 6), or Iwao Kagoshima’s Stopped Liquid (Cup), (1968), unlimited edition
(Figure 7), merely as challenges toward the stereotypical definition of art and artists.
John Cage talked of his Plexigram (from not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel

suite) (1970), edition of 125 (Figure 8):

It’s tribute to Marcel Duchamp. But I didn’t want to say anything about
Duchamp as the title indicates. So I subjected a dictionary to the “I
Ching”; I picked words, then letters from those words, and finally their

 

‘0 Beuy, “Introduction,” 6.

l5

arrangement in space by chance operations. I distributed these words
according to a typography likewise based on chance, on sheets of
Plexiglas... It is an object that has no meaning and which cannot be said to
refer to a text. And yet, it seems to me that Duchamp would have been, as
he used to say, “amused” by that object... "

Cage transformed Duchamp’s legacy to his own “chance” theory. Consciously or
not, these artists were still looking for artistic creativity by making both unique and
multiple works. Joseph Beuys is no exception, and the spontaneous original
creation was a key element for his multiples. Beuys said that what he tried to do in
his multiples was to work with images, with fantasy, with jokes, with humor. It
accelerated discussing the problem of a new society.’2 In Bruno Cora-Tee per la
[.otta Continua Vera, (Bruno Cora-Tee for the True Continuous Fight) (1975), 40
examples (Figure 9), Beuys filled a coca-cola bottle with herb, and framed it in a
glazed wood box with a printed label. The idea originated when Beuys saw Bruno
Cora, a member of the political movement “Lotta Continua,” drinking herb tea from
a similar bottle." Beuys tried to make something‘ ‘unique’ ’through the “unique”

episode and the use of consumer goods." Even in Felt Suit (1970), 100 examples,

 

11Quotedin 11.11-11 1 ll 11 " 1 1 ’1" :11. "0: 1111 1- .11.: 1.1 .

Coll ecti 19;) (South Bank Centie, 1994), 30.

‘2 Joseph Beuys,“ I put me on this train” interview with Art Papier 1979,” in Enezgx
’=. 1_1' :1r ' 11.3; :..111.=.'Ai1 111112;". 111
Wed. Carin Kuoni (Four Walls and Windows, 1990), 44.

’3 “Beuys always supported many left wing political movements. In Italy, be aided for
years the group of Lotta Continua, especially active during the seventies. One day in
Naples, he was with me in a restaurant, dining with a member of Lotta Continua, Bruno
Cora. This man had an intestinal problem, caused by stress, and, for this reason, he
always carried a Coca Cola bottle filled with a strange mixture of herbal tea in his bag.
Beuys is impressed by this bottle which became for him, a symbol of the revolutionary
fight.” Lucio Amelio, “Bruno Cora-Tee perla Lotta Continuous Fight” in Josephfiem;
IdeaandAQtiQn (Hirshl & Adler Modern, 1988), 74.

‘4 Andrew Patrizio discusses that the exploration of consumer goods through art is very
important issues for the artists who create multiple productions as well as the artists
such as Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. “Multiple Today: A Consumer’s Guide” in

16
tailored after his own suit, the clumsy look is bound to be a source of uniqueness, as
“a gag.”'5 At the same time, Beuys discussed the felt suit in terms of the warmth it
provides, that is, “a completely different kind of warmth, namely spiritual or

evolutionary warmth.”l6

Beuys’ ambition employed multiples not only as a means of informal,
anarchistic, and crude strategies performing outside the mainstream in order to
demolish the fetishization of the handmade art object and the gap between art and
life. Beuys’ multiples also act as means of making new formulae for an artwork’s
production and the artist’s identity, in the liberation of the objects from merely an
ideal means of production per se, challenging the traditional aesthetic. Calling them
“vehicles,” Beuys viewed multiples as art works that could cany his ideas far
beyond the reach of his unique object. This concept can be seen as the essence of

Beuys’ philosophy:

...we should not understand art as coming from complicated material
processes; you find the person outside of conditions in the physical
environment. The whole problematic of understanding the function of art
in the society is to change our understanding of ourselves and humankind —
the problem is only to understand that man is first a being who needs
nourishment for his spiritual needs, and that if he could cultivate and train
this primary nature, this spiritual nature, he could develop whole other
energies. In this way the whole plan is a kind of energy plan too.’7

 

Artunlrmited, 1994, 57.

‘3 J6rg Schellmann and Bernd Kluser, “Question to Joseph Beuys, in W
- : ; - ~ : ' : ed. J6rg Schellmann (Busch-

Reisinger museum, Harvard University Art Museums, WalkerArt Center, Edition

Schellmann, 1997), 16.

'3 Ibid.

'7 Joseph Beuys, “A Public Dialogue New York City, 197 4 in W

A'.‘:-1M=. 1 1.1- ‘1.‘1_1'1"":.1111°:.1 :111:u'1:1"-’,d.1h511_:8

 

17

Beuys established his position as “an informer” or as a “transmitter,” which often
conflicted with his position as a professor of the Dusseldorf Academy. Beuys’
emphasis on his position as “an informer” or as “a transmitter” can be observed in

his answer to the question of why he made multiples:

I am interested in the distribution of physical vehicles in the form of
editions because I’m interested in spreading ideas. The objects are only
understandable in relation to my ideas. The work I do politically has a
different effect on people because such a product exists, than it would have
if the means of expression were the written word. Although these products
may not seem suitable for bringing about political change, I think more
emanates from them than if the ideas behind them were revealed directly.
To me the vehicle quality of the edition is important... '3

It is obvious in this statement that Beuys used the multiples to convey his ideas as well
as his persona, including his relationship with the society of the past ( by his plane crash
myth) and present (by his involvement in the political movement trough the educational
institution). He also said in another interview: “...I am also a transmitter... If I produce
something, I transmit a message to someone else. The origin of the flow of information
comes not from matter, but from the ‘I,’ from an idea.”'9 Beuys was interested in
spreading “1,” and these objects are only understandable in relation to his persona — his
social sculpture theories, his personal myth, and his identity represented in art. He
succeeded in “multiplying” his persona without losing the connection to culture and
society. He believed that people who owned his multiples were staying in touch with

him and thus were able to extend the life of his own concepts.20

 

Carin Kuoni, (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 32.

‘3 Schellmann and Kli'iser, “Questions to Joseph Beuys,” 9.

‘9 Willoughby Sharp, “Interview with Joseph Beuys” in mm, Dec. 1969, 42.

20 Emily Rekow, “What is a Multiple?” in WES, (WalkerArt Center,

18

In order to keep his idea and his own image in forefront of a viewer’s mind,
visual and verbal metaphors play significant roles in his multiples. Almost all his
multiples embody a form of the artist: braunkreuz, stamps, signs, photo-images, or
“relics” of his actions. Beuys’ use of stamp, signature, and handwriting are vitally
important to the dissemination of his ideas, that echo his famous statement: “I am a

”2' as metaphors and artifice to “radiate” his idea and his own

transmitter, I radiate out...
image. His handwriting appears repeatedly in his multiples, not only in his signature,
but also in the writing of his favorite slogans or words used in his actions and lectures,
such as Postcard: Give me honey (I973 ), unlimited (Figure 10), and as in the title of the
work, such as La Rivoluzione siamo Noi (1972), edition of 180 (Figure 11). Indeed,
Beuys was an artist who had keen sensitivity to language and a penchant for word play.
Beuys’ rhetoric with regard to his interest and use of language and words was
remarkably consistent over the years in the course of innumerable interviews. For
example, Beuys said: “ For me it is the word that produces all images. It is the key sign
for all processes of molding and organization. When I use language, I try to induce the
impulses of this power...the power of evolution. But language is not to be understood
simply in terms of speech and words. Beyond language as verbalization lies a world of
sound and form impulses: a language of primary sound without semantic content but
laden with completely different levels of information.”22 In another statement, he said:

“One could ask how did the world originate...there are certain signs, at the moment I’d

like to call them threshold signs... in St. John’s gospels, it is said ‘In the beginning there

 

1997), no page number.
2‘ Quoted in was (Dia Art Foundation, 1988), 58.
22 Quoted in Caroline Tisdall, Josephm (Thames and Hudson, 1979), 101.

19

was the world,’ the word was Logos. What does Logos do? It starts the process of
evolution. How does it become a real live person?”3 Beuys himself stated in one of the

his postcard multiples, “Name equals Address.”2" (Figure 12)

The use of stamps, first emerged in Beuys’ works in 1967, had a precedent in
the “braunkreuz” which he used to mark drawings and objects throughout the early and
mid-19605.35 Braunkreu: (brown cross) — so named by Beuys, is an opaque reddish
brown paint, often mixed with the blood of a hare. Beuys began to use the substance in
the early 19605, and one can witness it, for instance, in his second and third multiples —
Two Frau/ems with shining bread (1966), 500 examples (Figure 13), and with Brown
(.‘ross (1966), 26 examples (Figure 14). As a generic medium for sculptural expression,
braunkreu: became a metaphor for the earth as a protective medium evoking the image
of rust, dirt, dried blood, or excrement. As a term, it connotes Christianity, German
militarism, Nazism, emergency, war, and the occult.26 The allusion to Nazism and World
War II is reinforced by Beuys’ plane crash anecdote. For the image of dirt and
excrement evoked by braunkreuz, the substance can also be a metaphor for James

Joyce’s last novel Finnegan ’s Wake,27 which Beuys listed in his Levenslauf’Werklau 2’3

 

23 Quoted in Cornelia Lauf, “ ‘The Word that Produces All Images’: Reading the
Drawings of Joseph Beuys,” in mm, Mar. 1990, 70.

2“ According to Ann Temkin, Beuys changed his name from Josef Beuys to Joseph Beuys.
(Personal communication, July 23,1997).

23 Ann Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing” in

M ed. Ann 'lbmkin and Bernice Rose (Philadelphia Museum of Art &
Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 46-47.

23 Emily Rekow, “Materials,” in W (Walker Art Center, 1997), no
page number.

27 In this novel, Joyce has his character Shim make ink using his own urine and
excrement.

20

,9,

for I950 “Beuys reads Finnegan 's Mike in ‘Haus Vylenneer . Thus, braunkreu: works
as an autographic medium linking life and art, which is as much cultural as personal. In
his public remarks, however, Beuys never sought to clarify these multiple allusions and
metaphors of braunkreu:.29 The very ambiguity and the mystification caused by the
interchange of these concepts are primary elements in Beuys’ work as a whole, where
his plane crash myth functions as one of the key “medium” linking life and art. In
with Brown Cross, Beuys performed his Gestaltung — the putting into form. The
multiple includes typescripts of two stage plays of 1961, one signed drawing with two
painted braunkreu:, and one half of a felt cross that is also his autographic medium.
These items were united in a handmade linen box and served to compose a portrait of

the artist by texts, image, sculpture, and the concept of the name — braunkreu:.30

From 1967 on, Beuys’ multiples provided the transition of his autograph from
braunkreu: to stamps." The stamps have several versions and the cross included in most
of the versions acted as a symbol of Beuys’ beliefs, theories, andlart, which signifies the
unity of different worlds, Christianity, and braunkreu:. Although it dates back at least to
the drawings of Kurt Schwitters,32 the rubber stamp was emphasized as a banal part of

everyday life during 19605.

 

33 Lebenslauf/Werklauf (Life Course/Work Course) was first published in 1964, and
revised several times afterward. It is a narrative text of the most important events in his
life and career. Often cryptic and not always factual, it is a kind of artwork showing in
important facet of the public persona he developed for himself.

29 Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 38.

3" Ibicl

3‘ Ibid.

21

There are two types of signatures Beuys used throughout his multiple
productions: the modern handwriting he usually used and the Siltterlineshrifi signature.
In his multiple Zeichnungen,33 (1974-5), 80 examples (Figure 15), one can see all the
stamps and signatures used by Beuys and an elk painted in red ink. Zeichnungen
represents six variations of the artist’ name, ranging from a stamp “Beuys +” in brown
oil paint to the Stiller/ineshrrfl signature and modern handwriting Some of the stamps
identify Beuys through his activities and organizations such as “Organization for Direct
Democracy through Referendum.” The “rubber stamp drawings” included the stamps
narrating specific events in Beuys’ life, such as the “Dusseldorf Kunstakademie 12. Mai
1971 Raum 20 18 Uhr.” Completing this autobiographical narrative, the elk was painted
in reddish ink, and the animal represents another personal icon for Beuys as “an
informer” or as a “transmitter.” As a bridge between the earthly and spiritual realms,
animals often appeared in Beuys’ work as “figures that pass freely from one level of
existence to another.”34 In addition to the elk, the animals that populate scores of his
multiples — most of them are prints -— are swans, stags and bees, all dense in symbolic
meaning, Germanic as well as Celtic Christian or Greco-Roman.35 These are animals of
legend and folktale that give shamans their attributes and serve as guardian spirits and
companions on their celestial journey. Beuys ofien identified personally with these

animals. These references define the aspirations of the Romantic artist from Casper

 

32 Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 38.

33 I used the German title here instead of the English title “Drawings,” because
Zeichnung means drawing, draft, portrayal, depiction as well as signature and marking.
3" Joseph Beuys, quoted in Joan Rothfuss, “The Natural World” in Josenhfiem
Multiple (Walker Art Center, 1997), no page number.

“5 Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 33.

22

David Friedrich to Wassily Kandinsky. 3"

Beuys’ hopeful vision of himself as a bridge between the earthly and spiritual
worlds suggest his assertion that while man is an earthly being he is nourished through
the spirit.37 Thus, Beuys’ multiples had the power to disseminate ideas and hold spiritual
power for the artists. The multiples often expresses that Beuys’ origin and belief

substantially relied on man’s spiritual history:

No longer can the idea of production and enterprise be restricted in a field
where only a physical production operates. All productions are now invested
with the idea of a new anthropological declaration of human individual
freedom and the enterprise which results from freedom. This is to declare that a
spiritual being has therefore firstly the need for spiritual goods. By having
these spiritual thoughts and the free field of cultural doings, the people will see
that thsesy have a need to organize only secondly all other needs, i.e., physical
needs.

Beuys regarded spirituality as one of the strongest powers we have, and his theory that
“everybody is an artist” is rooted in his assertion that all human individuals possess
such spiritual powers as their own imaginative intensity in order to visualize a new art
and make it real. One of Beuys’ most familiar sources for his theory concerning
spirituality is Rudolf Steiner, a founder in 1913 of a movement known as

Anthroposophy, who was also associated with Theosophists until 1913.39 Steiner

 

33 Rothfuss, “The Natural World,” no page number, and Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life
Drawings,” 32-35.
37 Rothfuss, “The Natural World,” no page number.
33 Joseph Beuys, “Speech upon an holnorary doctorate degree from the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design, Halifax,” '

I _- . - 1 ’

, ed. Carin Kuoni (Four Walls

 

Eight Wmdows,1990),56.’
39 During his years at the Dusseldorf Academy, 1947-1951, Beuys kept in occasional
contact with anthroposophical circles. What fascinated him about Steiner’s theosophy

23

incamated the new spirit of research in the realms of spirituality, cosmology, and in the
redefinition of human nature. These themes are well expressed in his many books on
such topics as Christianity as .Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity (1902).
Strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner,"0 Beuys’ emphasis on the events of Christ’s life
and his quasi-Christ like behavior through the multiple productions (i.e. distribution of
fragments of the objects made during his actions) also proves that his spiritual theory

was dependent on Christianity. For example:

We in the West, we have also a kind of spiritual issue as certain basic
underground that is an ancient tradition, which runs through very old Christian
impulses and through Rosicrucian intentions,41 and is being carried by people
like Rudolf Steiner, for instance, in his so—called Anthroposophy. These still
functioning spiritual impulses in the West could make a bridge between the
spirituality of the West and the Spiritualin of the East to find the connection
with the cosmic spirituality.“2

In .Beuys’ multiples, the reference of Christianity was often cultivated. Beuys talked of
his Two Friiuleins with shining bread (1966) of 500 examples (Figure 13), in the

documentation “Decollage 5” with happenings, pieces, and projects by several artists:

Yes, this is, quite briefly speaking, a direct hint toward the spiritual nature of
matter. ...The term “shining bread” means that bread has its origin in the

 

was the concept of redemption, in which the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are
seen as three stages in nature that lead upward first to man; then to the “fourfold
structure” of physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I”: and finally to an absolute
human cognitive faculty. All this Beuys eagerly absorbed and later integrated into his
own teaching. Heiner Stachelhaus, W (Abbeville Press, 1987), 39.
“0 See WWW, ed. Friedhelm menneles (Verlag
Katholishes Bibelwerk GmbH, 1989).
4‘ His interest in the Rosicrucian is one of the key elements for his word play of
braunkreuz Since braunkreuz echoes the name of Christian Rosenkreuz, the supposed
fifteenth century mystic for whom the Rosicrusian sect was named. See Temkin, “Joseph
Beuys: Life Drawing,” 38.
42 Joseph Beuys,‘ ‘Conversation between Lama Sogyal Rirrposche and Joseph Beuys,

- : f '-- - .. '_ redCarinKuoni

 

(Four Walls Elght Windows, 19991192.”

24

spiritual ream. Quite in the same way as in trans-substantiation, that is,
transmutation of the Host in the old church service; where it is said: this is
bread only by outer appearance, in reality it is Christ. This, then, is trans-
substantiation of matter."3

For Beuys, the religious element of Christianity implies the possibility of spiritual

transformation outside orthodox religious systems.

Beuys’ spiritual concern is well expressed in his multiple Intuition... instead of
a cookbook (1968) (Figure 4).“ He said that intuition equaled “expanded consciousness,
the thought that recognizes itself, dealing intensively, again and again with the
thought.”"5 The word “Intuition,” written in pencil on a wooden box, implies, in part,
Beuys’ articulated image of himself as a sender or a transmitter. At the same time,
“intuition” suggests Beuys’ reference of the animals as a spiritual bridge. Beuys’ also
alluded to the extraordinary perceptive power of women who can reach the realm of the
spirit in his drawings.“6 The many artists who portrayed women so constantly — Gustav

Klimt, Alberto Giacometti, the artists of German Expressionism, to name those who

 

"3 Schellmann and Kliiser, “Question of Joseph Beuys,” 11-12.
"3 The Spirituality of Intuition...was also quoted in Mauricio Kagel’s multiple. Kagel on
Escapade of Strings (1968):
1)While plucking you hold the instrument very close to your ear.
2)the order of the pegs on the board can be changed according to the
“Stimmung” (= mood/ = tuning of an instrument)
3)For stereophonic listening you order a second Escapade of strings and put it
to your free ear.
4)If you own ...1'nstead ofa cookbook (sic) by Joseph Beuys you can use it as a
resonance body for this plucking instrument. Your intuition shows you how.
In. .1.111:1.U-11':1 - '0‘1111°13|‘1111 1'1311: 11-1 11 ' '11(Th8
South Bank Centre, 1994), 37.
‘5 Joseph Beuys, quoted in Hilary Lane, “ "I‘o create is divine, to multiply is human’(Man
Ray)” in i_1ru_1-11:1'Mu11“ 1 1' _'1|‘ 1.11. "I: 1 1.11 1' 6-1: 1 1'
Collection (The South Bank Centre, 1994), 37.
‘3 Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 31.

25

interested Beuys — had different contexts for their obsessions. Beuys’ representation of
women or the ability to reach the realm of the spirit can be traced back to some of the
traditional cultural viewpoints. In the case of Beuys, his context can be closer to the
traditional feminine archetype, often expressed as “primitive sexuality” or as “the other”

(against Beuys’ position as a male), in the artists of the German Expressionism.

For Beuys, the commitment to multiples was not merely an adjunct activity. It
was his largest step to create his art, theories and identity in connection with his other
artistic activities and beliefs. Beuys believed objects communicate in ways that words
cannot — they might be the catalyst for a debate, or produce a visual “counter image” in
the front of a viewer’s mind.”7 If they function as he hoped, they will challenge thinking

towards new ways — not only about art, but about the society we live:43

It is a kind of vehicle, you know. It is a kind of making, spreading out ideas,
that is what I think. It spreads out the idea. You must care for information and I
personally try to make information available not only in a written way, but also
in a logical description of the steps we should take in the future towards a
liberal, equal, and social society.”

The multiples worked as an antennae, and the intricacy of an idea deeply associated
with the nation was conveyed and transformed as new energy for the art world and the

public.

 

“7 “The counter image” evoked by the image can be dated back to the artists of
Surrealism.

’8 JosenhfieuysMultinles (Walker Art Center, 1997), no page number.
“9 Beuys, “I put me on this train! Interview with Art Papier 1979,” 44.

26

 

Figure 5 Joseph Beuys Capri Battery (1985)

27

 

Figure 6 Gunter Weseler Breathing Object in Cage (1969)

28

 

Figure 7 Iwao Kagoshima Stopped Liquid (Cup) (1968)

29

 

Figure 8 John Cage Plexigram (from Not Wanting to say
Anything about Marcel Suite) (1970)

 

30

 

..

Figure 9 Joseph Beuys Bruno Cora- Tee per la Lotta continua Vera (1970)

31

0% mm W
,, /

Figure 10 Joseph Beuys Postcard: Give me honey (1973)

 

 

‘l w-

,r. .. m-

I
1 A..
I

Figure 11 Joseph Beuys La Rivoluzione siamo Noi (I972)

33

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.~ 1*. ‘_ . 9
._ V \_/""n . -- 1% .‘ 1111‘

NAME IST GLEICH ADRESSE

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Figure 12 Joseph Beuys Name equals Address (1974)

34

 

Figure 13 Joseph Beuys Two Frau/ems with shining bread (1966)

35

 

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Figure 14 Joseph Beuys with Braunkreuz (1966)

36

 

GEST‘RACH

 

Figure 15 Joseph Beuys Zeichnungen (1974-5)

 

CHAPTER 3
The Photographic Images in Beuys’ Multiples

Beuys’ theory, persona, and identity - are always overlapping; one cannot talk
about one without the others. Throughout Beuys’ life and art, photographic images
served as an important catalyst for those three, and sometimes created important threads
between them. One of the first and most famous examples of this is a photograph of an
action at the “Festival for New Art,” Aachen, Germany, July 20, 1964, the twentieth
anniversary of the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Beuys’ action was titled kukei/Acopee-
nein Brown cross Fat corners model fat corners. His action was interrupted by angry
right-wing students who stormed the stage, punching Beuys in the nose. A photograph
taken just afterwards shows Beuys with his bloodied nose holding a cross (Figure 16).
The descriptions of the violent reaction, police intervention,’and heated disruption of his
action in the Aachen festival were widely circulated in the press with the photograph.
“That photographer became the first of many intentional or unintentional collaborators

”I

with Beuys in creating himself as a work of art. For Beuys, this Christ like suffering-

savior image in the photograph was crucial to the art and theory that he developed and

 

‘ Ann Temkin, J“oseph Beuys: An Introduction to His Life and Work, ” in 'l_‘hi_nlgag_i;

WWW, ed. Ann ’Ibmkin and Bernice Rose (Philadelphia
Museum of Art and museum of Modern Art, 1993), 16.

37

38
shaped in the late ‘605 and ‘705, since the philosophy of Christ’s resurrection became
increasingly important in Beuys’ theory in connection with his actions. The religious
metaphor combining its own image with Christ or biblical figures in art can be traced
back to the German Romantic tradition, such as Samuel Palmer2 and the artists of
German Expressionism. These artists tried to relocate their “secular experience in the

realm of the sacred.’

The same effect and use of photographs — dramatizing his actions and
conveying visual metaphors —- are clearly observed in his multiple productions. Some of
those multiples are closely related to his personally experienced catastrophes. His

response regarding this connection:

That’s difiicult — since all experiences one has are personal, including
experiences of catastrophes in the surrounding environment. I certainly feel
that the things I have experienced in my life have not been without effect...The
last world war was one such example, and personal experience of aspects of
that did in fact influence the conception of some objects. But one constantly
has to struggle against these traumatic conditions, and that’s true of every
individual not just me. That is the essence of human nature. As Nietzsche said:
Man is an ill being. That’s a definition of humanity. The human being is ill and
can be ill.4

His personal history, with the Nazi period such as the catastrophe of Germany, became

an effort to find salvation, to make his own experience come out right in the wider

 

 

and Hudson, 1975), 62-63. V r
3 Ibid., 64.
“ J6rg Schellmann and Bernd Kluser, “Questions to Joseph Beuys,” in We

- 1 1 1 In 1 5, ed J6rg Schellmann (Busch-
Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, WalkerArt Center, Edition
Schellmann,1997), 20.

 

39

context. One of the many roles Joseph Beuys assigned himself was that of a healer, and
he often spoke of a vast social wound that needed repair. Beuys’ presentation of the
wound — with his body, his objects, his discourse — appeared consistently in the works
that he sometimes called “ART PILL.”5 These photographic images in Beuys’ multiples
effectively convey this message combining key elements for the artist — Gennany’s
moral devastation in the wake of World War II, the Christian notion of suffering, and his
own body. The images function as his statement regarding the collective transformation
of the “social sculpture” towards the better society. This is what is emphasized in his

theory.

An example of this is Tramstop, (1977), ISO examples, a silk-screen on card
based on the photographic image of the monument used in Beuys’ installation in the
German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 1976 (Figure 17). The monument was cast
directly from the so-called Iron Man Monument erected in Kleve in 1653 by Count
Johann Moritz von Nassau, who governed the city where Beuys grew up.6 The
photographic image shows Beuys — one can see only his arms — standing behind the
monument that creates a form of cross. With this multiple Beuys drew a connection
between its autobiographical elements and the theme of the Crucifixion, and espoused
critical metaphors for his theories: the Christian notion of suffering, redemption, rebirth,

and a portrait of the artist who is wounded. Supported by his war experience — wounded

 

5 Caroline Tisdall, My (Thames and Hudson, 1979), 89.
6 Heiner Stachelhaus, Wye (Abbeville Press Publisher, 1987), 162.

40

several times other than his plane crash -— and the allusion to the suffering of Christ with
his body, Beuys’ theory stands on a vast social wound in need of repair, this gave forth
his role as a healer, and the belief of spirituality within the individual. Here, Beuys
transformed private circumstances into compelling public theater. When asked in an

interview what was his clearest example of the image of Christ, Beuys answered:

The expanded concept of art. That’s very simple... The expanded concept of art
is not a theory but a way of proceeding which says that the inner eye is very
much more crucial that the external images that develop anyway. We then
suddenly also know that we are spiritual beings — and that what is visible
within ourselves, becoming source of images and invested with its own inner
higher mathematics, also endows as with the ability to perceive the Christ-
power. That is the evolutionary power, the evolutionary principle, which
emanates from man today.7

With this comment, the photographic image in the multiple provided a vehicle for his
theory and art where Beuys’ vision of Christianity was extended to his “expanded

concept of art.”

Beuys’ self image as a healer and his vision of a vast social wound also
appeared in the photographs of the multiple Show Your Wound (1977), a simultaneous
allusion to Christ’s display of his stigmata and the image of a hospital radiograph used in
World War II, which is incorporated into the work (Figure 18).8 Two holes were made in

the black film by Beuys and these were marked with two braunkreu:, ambiguously

 

7 Joseph Beuys, “Joseph Beuys in Conversation with Friedhelm Mennekes, 1984” in
Joseph Beuys: In Memoriam Joseph Beuys, Obituaries, Essays, Speeches (Inter
Nationes Bonn. 1986), 34.

8 Amy Levine, “Medicine and Healing” 111W (Walker Art Center,
1997), no page number.

41

signifying Christianity, the occult, “wound” as Germany’s Nazi past, and the artist’s
autobiography.9 The photographic image is based on the installation of the same title
Beuys assembled in February 1976, following his own serious illness of the previous
summer. The title echoes his statement: “If we show our wounds to others we can be
healed. These wounds can be anything - desires, the unspeakable...”'0 The two metal
operating tables in the image of the multiple allude to personal experience that is

extended to a drama of large personal and universal suffering and recovery.

To disseminate his ideas, Beuys often used photographic images from his
actions. Beuys’ major art works are his performance activities, for which he used the
term Aktionen (actions) with the connotation of a political military maneuver.“ However,
only limited numbers of people observed them. Probably his actions are most widely
seen in his multiples as films, “relics” and photographs. Many of them were created
during the occasion of his action. The multiples made contact with many anonymous

viewers who were probably the most important audience for Beuys. The images of

 

9 Beuys also used braunkreuz as overpaint in his multiple 3 Ton Edition, (197 3),
employing photographs of his actions and himself. The multiple is a series of 40 different
images (max. 100 examples of each image), total weight 3 tons, each with addition by
Beuys. The various images are produced with irregular sequences and total and many
variations in breunkreuz and collage, and numbered without consideration of themes or
additions. The sheets were originally produced for an “underwater book” which did not
appear for technical reasons. Further investigation on the relationship between the
photographs and breunla'euzis needed. Ann Temkin discusses Beuys’ braunkreuz used
as overpaint in more than a dozen works centering on Greta Garbo, employing
photographs and photocopies of the film star. See her “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,”in

- : z -: : -, :, ed Ann'lbmkinandBermceRose
(Pluladelphra Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 41.

1° Joseph Beuys quoted In W (Watari
Museum of ContemporaryArt, 1991), 54.

 

42

Beuys’ actions that were reproduced in his multiples were again reproduced in the
audience’s mind. As a result of the process of the reproduction, Beuys or “Beuys”
continues to be shaped and recreated by the environment of the carrier of the multiples,
sometimes with a message regarding his own personal myth and persona. Hence, the
production of multiples is far closer than his other works in regards to his points of
continuity and transformation in his art: “social sculpture” as “evolutionary process,”
“everything in a state of change.”'2 As vehicles to inspire his audience to think and
communicate, the photographic image of his performances and installations served as
his philosophical teaching and enabled him to disperse his ideas to a wide audience.l3
The multiples containing photographic images of his actions have a strong sense of
narrative content that start beyond the actual action as the snapshots are reworked in
condensed form in smaller objects. The action and the artistic works never finished; they
continued to transform and to be transformed by the various spheres of the people who

possessed “the retrospective” of Beuys’ art activities. “We have not yet reached art.”l4

While Beuys started to make multiples in 1965, the first time he used a
photograph in multiple object appeared in VacuumHMass, (1970), 100 examples, a

photo linen with an illustrated action object (Figure 19). In this multiple, his action and

 

“ Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 48.

‘2 Tisdall, Josenhfleuye, 6.

‘3 Claudia Swager,‘ ‘Joseph Beuys’ legacy. A challenge at the end of the 20‘h centurY’ in
W (WalkerArt Center, 1997), no page number.

‘4 Joseph Beuys, quoted 1n Gunter Minas, We
(GoetheOInstitut, 1990), 5.

43
the object are reinterpreted. The concept of “action” encompasses not only the actual
performance but also the intellectual process.'5 The object is the “Simultaneous Iron
Box” with 100 kilos of fat and 100 air pumps used in the action vacuumHMass in the
Galerie Art Inermedia, Germany, 1968. This action took place for six hours, and the
nature of the action was determined by the movements generated by the process of
making the object. After the fat and pumps were placed in a chest the shape of a cubic
half cross, the top surface was sealed down by arc-welding, a ritual use of fire. Thus by
the late 603, the relationship between action and sculpture was extremely significant, and
the process often resulted in “a relic” of the event. Multiples performed the significant
role of “ritualizing” his action by using the image of “a relic,” which could radiate to a
large public. The photo-image of “the relic” forms a shape of a half cross. Finally, the
relatively large photo linen — 125 x 175 cm — recalls the Shroud of Turin — the cloth
fragment believed to be a Christ’s burial shroud.l6 Here the multiple with the
photographic image and the medium became another form of visual relic to arouse

“spiritual response”'7 in people.

In addition, many of the multiples show Beuys’ body as possessing an
extraordinary unity, regardless of range of setting and subjects. Beuys regarded himself

as a transformative principle forming the social sculpture. His most overt

 

15Dierk Stemmler, “On the Multiples of Beuys,” in W

WM, ed J6rg Schellmann (Busch- Reisinger Museum,
Harvard University Art Museums, Walker Art Center, Edition Schellmann, 1997), 509.

‘6 WWW, (WalkerArt Center, 1997), no page number.
‘7 Ibid.

44

autobiographical gesture was the inclusion of his physical person in his performance. In
his public remarks, Beuys often mentioned shamanism and psychoanalysis together as
strategies for addressing the general public in a way that is at once educative and
therapeutic. “ So when I appear as a kind of shamanistic figure, or allude to it,” Beuys
said, “ I do it to stress my belief in other priorities and the need to come up with a
completely different plan for working with substances.”‘8 Here, likewise, Beuys’

intention is often seen in his multiples which incorporated photographs.

An example of this is the best known image from the action How to explain
pictures to a dead hare, appeared in the multiple of the same title with his comment

(Figure 20):

To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. The rest is the waste product, a
demonstration. If you want to explain yourself you must present something
tangible. But after a while this has only the function of an historic document.
Objects aren’t very important for me any more. I want to get to the origin of
matter, to the thought behind it. Thought, speech, communication — and not
only in the socialist sense of the word — are all expressions of the free human
being.19

The multiple How 10... represents his Gesamtkustwerk; Beuys’ body, performance,
sculpture, drawing, materials, theories and teaching. These elements were never neutral,
and together were essential to convey Beuys’ concepts. The image is based on the

photograph by Ute Klophaus, a photographer who worked most closely with Beuys. In

 

‘8 Quoted 1n Gregory Ulmm, A o ' - : ' - g - -
W (John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1985), 222.

‘9 Joseph Beuys, Quoted in mm (Art Council of Great Britain, 1970),
21.

 

45

the action How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare from 1965, Beuys was seated in an
art gallery, cradling a dead rabbit in his arms. He smeared its head with honey and gold
leaf, and tied to his right foot an iron sole, companion to a felt sole on his left foot.
Beuys “explained” his drawings hanging behind him to the dead hare. Since the action
concentrates on the most dramatic individual moments in Beuys’ iconography, the image
became more real than the actual action. The multiple, designated the entire 4,000 copy
edition of the catalogue, confirms Beuys’ exquisite sense for staging individual moments
within his actions with a view to their ultimate translation by the camera.20 At the same
time, the widely reproduced image demonstrates Beuys’ genius for achieving theatrical
effect with his props as all part of a consistent vocabulary: gold, honey, hare, felt, iron,
and himself. Gold represented the alchemist’s quest to transform base material into gold.
Honey, first used by Beuys as a material in this action, became an important substance
throughout his career. Being a symbol of nourishment and holding, emitting a certain
mystical quality, honey to Beuys was a substance to awaken “dead” intellect and
organically unite intellect (form) with matter, re-creating the tie between mind and the

material world. Beuys commented on this action:

Gold and honey indicate a transformation of the head, and therefore, naturally
and logically, the brain and our understanding of thought, consciousness and all
the other levels necessary to explain pictures to a hare: the warm stool insulated
with felt, the ‘radio’ made of bone and electrical components under the stool
and the iron sole with the magnet... This seems to have been the action that
most captured people’s imaginations. The idea of explaining to an animal

 

2° W (Walker Art Center, 1997), no page number, Christopher

Phillips, “:Arena The Chaos of the Unnamed” in W
' ed. Lynn Cooke and Karen Kelly (Dia Center for the

hamsLiflhadlzeerL'mtellieenL
Arts, 1994), and Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: An introduction to his Life and Work, ” 16—17.

46

conveys a sense of the secrecy of the world and of existence that appeals to the
imagination.21

By representing the artist, whose head is smeared with honey and gold leaf, talking to a
dead hare, the photograph of the multiple with his comment “to be a teacher...”
exemplifies his attitude toward materials as fundamental to his art. For this be employed
materials that were capable of manifesting his theory of sculpture and self-

transformation.

In addition to his presentation of such emblematic single image, Beuys also
employed photographs of his actions in a very different manner in his multiples.
Outsized, blurred, multiplied, colored — these photographs were manipulated in Beuys’
multiples. As a result, the photograph is no longer used for the reproduction of “reality.”
By multiplying these images created through photo-techniques, the subject disappears
and the viewer can observe only “the image” of it. Emphasizing the blurred picture
stresses the fact that for Beuys, photography represents representation, reproduces
reproduction, which is different from a simple reproduction process. Beuys’
photographic works throw the documentary nature of photography into question. The

picture that is produced is a form of memory. Ute Klophaus suggests:

Photography fixed him (Beuys), and at the same time provided him with the
impulse always to change himself, to flee the fixing (pinning sown). He didn’t
want to be pinned down, and he didn’t want to let himself be pinned down.
What he saw of himself in the pictures, he sought to go beyond, or he left it and
he took other paths. ...the picture arose, he or his work were in the picture, and
this picture threatened to freeze him, to fix him. He was fluid. He changed

2‘ Tisdall, Josenhfieuys, 105.

47

himself. From within him came new silence, new speech or speechlessness,
new actions, new forms, and there were new photographs of his works.22

By using photographs, Beuys created the image which is an appeal to language, and
permitting an articulation of the imaginary to make statements about himself. Beuys’ use
of images appealed to his life and work, which together created statements. Klophaus
said, “[Beuys] didn’t want to feel that his secrets could be torn from him and brought to
light. He didn’t want that from the silence belonging to him; speech should be made; and

photography is speech.”23

Beuys’ use of “photographic speech” by the blurred image can be seen in from
Eurasian Stafl (1973), 180 example, is a silk-screen in black (some brown) based on the
photograph, again by Ute Klophaus, from the action of the same title with Henning
Christiansen in 1968 (Figure 21). The image captured one scene from Beuys’ movement
at the performance. Beuys went to the felt sole on the floor and placed his iron soled foot
over it at right angle. Then he put a lump of fat in the right angle behind his bent knee
and crouched down sharpening this angle, until the fat was squeezed out onto the felt
sole. The photograph shows only his lower body: fat is in the right angle behind his bent
knee and his foot is tied with the iron sole. The lower part of the photograph is blurred,
and even the whole image is not clear by some chemical reaction. The sequence unfolds
almost cinematically. The blurry close-up Beuys’ legs with fat, felt, and iron all can be

transformed into metaphor by Beuys’ theory of sculpture as evoking something of the

 

22 Quoted in Phillips, “Arena: The Chaos of the Unnamed,” 59.
2" Quoted in Phillips, “Arena: The Chaos of the Unnamed,” 52.

48

otherworldly and electrifying atmosphere. In addition, the blurred image of his “knees”
again alludes to the anthoroposophist Rudolf Steiner who suggested the knees as the area

of the skeleton associated with the ability to see into the future.24

Beuys also liked to use photo images which appeared in the mass-media such as

a television, newspapers, posters, and magazines. He once talked about the media:

The media are obvious means of expressions, they are vibrations, in which
important inforrnations should be implanted, so that they reach the addressed
persons. The medium is totally innocent. But it depends, that the infonnations
are important, and it depends also, that all those infonnations which have no
importance or which are irrational, give way all those ones, which people need
for their human rights.25

The fiction and the reality in the images were imperative for Beuys to convey “Beuys”
to a larger public and to make statements about himself for “the addressed persons.” He
knew that the media was a critical means of expression in his day, and so he disdained
no role and no forum to express or make himself understood, using satellite television or
open discussion. By being “Beuys,” who was in offset, a product of the media. Beuys
performed a self-transfonnation within a collective context, within a larger vision of
how any individual is seen and transformed by that society. The force of the invented
images in the mass—media, used in Beuys’ multiples, promoted subjectivity, which is
culturally and politically mediated and simultaneously acquires the identity of others.

What complicates everything in mass-media is that the same force can be used for the

 

2" WW, (WalkerArt Center, 1997), no page number.
25 Joseph Beuys, quoted 1n - - - ' __ -_ -
zeiehneJeh (Galerie & Edition Schlegl, 1989), 42.

 

49

creative and the commercial.26 Beuys’ identity was transformed into a persona created
by viewers. Beuys’ “subjectivity” was constructed and emphasized only when it was
expressed “in public.” Thus, Beuys’ use of photographic images in multiples proved that,
as long as the self and the other exist and the self authenticates itself by means of the
other, it will be impossible to escape its spell of “subjectivity.” Beuys established the
affiliation between the self and “the other” through “images” made by reproducing

mass-media in multiples.

Democracy is merry (1973), 80 examples (Figure 22), is a multiple based on
one of the famous media image of Beuys. It is a silk-screen with the handwritten
addition of 80 examples, that also appeared as postcards of unlimited editions. The
multiple shows Joseph Beuys and several students leaving the Staatliche Kustakademie
of Dusseldorf after a student demonstration in support of the artist, who had recently
been dismissed as Professor of Monumental Sculpture. Against the restricted admission
of students to the academy, Beuys occupied the academy office with a number of
students to demand the equal opportunity for all candidates. Flanked by stem-faced
policemen, Beuys and his supporters grinned mischievously as they marched out of the
building. It appeared in the press the day afier the occupation. The handwritten text by
Beuys reads: “Demokratie ist lustig.” In this multiple, the photograph of the multiple in

color of green with his handwritten text conveyed the reality of the artist as aura, a

 

26 Quoted in Jean Francis Chevrier and Catherine David, “The Present State of the
Image,” in Passagesdgl’image (Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, 1991), 26.

50

l.27 Beuys heroic image as a teacher or

reality that Beuys had grasped as well as Warho
Spiritual leader in connection with actual events often appeared in his multiple

production.

Beuys wanted his multiples and ideas to reach the widest possible audience and
the multiple was one of the best vehicles for the purpose; hence his attraction to
photography as an unrivaled vehicle of visual propaganda. As we have seen, the
photograph as a recording technique and the documentary nature did not always play a
significant role in Beuys’ multiples. Beuys never used the camera himself. Mose of the
images appear in association with other materials, texts, or mediums. A number of
images are purposely discolored by various chemical solutions. By means of the image
Beuys sought to make a statement, the work could not be completed in itself. In order to
demonstrate that his persona is transformed through the collective context of society in
these multiples, Beuys utilized both forces of the photograph — “the commercial” and the
“artistic.” His multiples never finished in themselves, and continued to make statements
regarding the people, society, and himself. Ultimately, the production became “social

sculpture.”

 

27 Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing,” 41.

51

 

Figure 16 Joseph Beuys during an action at the “Festival for New Art” (1964)

52

    

.4 .,
. ;' -,,'
...q .
..I.‘
, .

l ' .
~_-~. . . .
1" n';' I

......

‘i’ ' r'

 

., 3 i 1'.
' x‘MA.‘ “1‘4“. ' .

Figure 17 Joseph Beuys Tramstop (1977)

53

 

 

Figure 18 Joseph Beuys Show Your Wound (1977)

54

 

 

Figure 19 Joseph Beuys Vacuum H Mass (1977)

55

 

‘ “my - I . a, - « mvam—uu—r

 

Figure 20 Joseph Beuys The Chief /' How to Explain
Pictures to a Dead Hare (1970)

56

 

Figure 21 Joseph Beuys from Eurasian Stafl (1973)

57

 

Figure 22 Joseph Beuys Democracy is merry (1973)

CHAPTER 4
The Idea of Politics in the Multiples

The whole thing [multiple] is a game, one which, with the help of this kind of
information, counts on anchoring a vehicle somewhere close by, so that
people can later think back on it. (...) One person says: Yes, I ’ve got such a
bottle. Another one has such a wooden box and a third one says: I 've heard
something about political activities, and so all sorts of diflerent concepts
converge, and that 's what I ’m interested in, that a whole lot of concepts
come together:

- Joseph Beuysl

By his “expanded concept of art,” Beuys asserted that all human creation —
whether social, political, economic or spiritual — has to become art. In this sense, politics
is art, he said, not as the “art of the possible,” but of the freeing of all creative forces.2
We could use the force, be believed, to reconstruct society as a whole. Beuys’ self-
representation and artistic works were often performed within his political activism and
he utilized the sphere of politics as an idea, as an orientation, and as a practice to

develop his identity in and outside himself. His statement above indicates the significant

 

1 J6rg Schellmann and Bernd Klt'iser, “Questions to Joseph Beuys” in W
Mul ' l ' 1 ' nn’ f Mul i l n Prin , ed. J6rg Schellmann (Busch-

Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Edition

Schellmann, 1997), 9.
2 WM (Walker Art Center, 1997), no page number, and Conference;

58

59

existence of an “expanded concept of art” in the multiples. “One person says: Yes, I’ve
got such a bottle.” “A bottle is his multiple lz’vcrvess [I (1968) of edition 40, which
consisted of two soda-water bottles, one with felt, in a wooden box with text printed on
the lid (Figure 23). The instructions on the lid reads: “drink the contents of bottle [I and

99}

throw the cap as far away from you as possible. Using consumer goods with felt, his
autobiographical material, the multiple reveals Beuys’ desire to liberate art from an
elitist toy. The instructions suggests the individual consumer in a mass audience act as
an artist by his multiple. He said, “another one has such a wooden box.” “A wooden
box” is used in lntuition...instead of cookbook (1968) (Figure 4). As discussed in
Chapter 2, the multiple is about spirituality and Beuys’ position as a transmitter of this
spiritual energy. “A third one says: I’ve heard something about political activities.” This
statement indicates the significance of Beuys’ actual political activities in his multiples.
Then, “all sorts of different concepts converge, and that’s what I’m interested in, that a
whole lot of concepts come together.” Beuys’ defined politics as every individual having
a voice, versus any specific governmental structure. A better society might evolve,

Beuys believed, by not allowing the pendulum of the law to swing too far to one side or

an other to affect the spiritual or economical life of the people.

Beuys’ idea of politics in relation to his “expanded concept of art” is, again,

based on the theories of anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner and his “threefold social

 

WM, Tate Gallery Liverpool, 1993, no page number.
3 Schellmann and Kluser, “Questions to Joseph Beuys,” 9.

60

organism.”4 Steiner examined three independent spheres of society in the organic
structure: the cultural life (science, art, religion, the educational system, information),
the rights life (legislative, executive, judiciary, state, and politics) and the economic life
(production, distribution, and consumption of goods). Steiner asserted that only when
each sphere is organized under its own principle — freedom, equality, solidarity — the

healing of the social organism can occur.5

Beuys’ idea of politics that was strongly influenced by Steiner’s teaching can be
seen in Beuys’ blackboard drawings in which anthroposophy plays an important role.
During his actions, speeches, discussions and lectures, Beuys wrote and drew whole
diagrams of his theory of politics, economics, and art as visual complements to verbal
instruction. The blackboards frequently re-emerged in multiples as postcards and prints.
Blackboard, (1972), 200 examples, is a silk-screen printed on both sides with diagrams
drawn by Beuys on a wall blackboard during the event “Self-representation” in Museum
F olkwang, Essen, 1972. Blackboard I, II, III (1980) (Figure 24), is a set of 3 screenprints
of blackboards on which Beuys wrote various lectures during the winter semester of
1974-1975 when he was a guest professor at the Hamburger Hochschule fur fildende
kt'inste.‘5 The blackboards are “the relic” from these events, and those created during the

encyclopedic work Directional Forces began by the exhibition “Art into Society, Society

 

4 Regina Brenner, “Political Activism,” in mm (Walker Art Center,
1997), no page number.

5 Ibid.

6 Blackboard I is 1,000 examples, Blackboard II is 1,250 examples + 20 proofs + 10 proofs,
BIaclrboara’ III is 1,200 examples.

61

into Art,” in 1974 were also used in his installation at the Rene Block Gallery in New
York of 1975, at the Biennial in Venice in 1976, and at the Natinalgalerie Berlin. One of
the blackboards appeared as a multiple: Letter from London, (1977) (Figure 25), which is
a lithograph of l 15 examples. Postcard: Directional Forces, (1977) (Figure 26),
unlimited edition, shows that in the installation view at the Nationalgalerie Berlin, Beuys
is carrying the blackboards representing his vision of “a better world” as his principles

and goals.

The blackboard drawings and writings convey the process of writing and
drawing as if performed in the classroom, and again the blackboards emphasized his
position as a teacher, reaching a wider realm by the multiples production. It is worth
mentioning that, in appearance, Beuys’ blackboard drawings bear an uncanny
resemblance to Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical drawings, with the exception that Beuys’
drawings lack Steinter’s evocative use of color.7 From 1900 until his death in 1925,
Steiner traveled extensively throughout Europe giving over five thousand lectures.
During these lectures, Steiner, like most professors, drew on the blackboard. Although
Beuys was too young to have seen Steiner, and little evidence exists for Beuys’ direct
experience with Steiner’s drawings, Beuys’ spiritual intensity through visual

components obviously echoes the view of Steiner. Noise/ess Blackboard Eraser (1974),

 

7 Lawrence Render, “Rudolf Steiner’s Blackboard Drawings: An Aesthetic Perspective” in
111 -1:'1 '1' 11-1.:1 1._1.--:.1‘=3.::.-_._111.1_| gBerkeleyArt
Museum & Pacific Film Archive, http: //www. bampfa. berkeley... .its/steiner/steinerbio.
html. (Dec. 1997)

62

edition of 550 (Figure 27), was the multiple created by the idea during a political lecture
of Beuys’ first public dialogue in the United States. When collectors wanted to buy the
blackboard Beuys wrote upon, it was wiped clean with a similar eraser. Beuys said he
wanted to make an inexpensive multiple that would symbolize the events.8 While
serving as a record of Beuys’ U. S. tour, Noiseless Blackboard Eraser is another form of
his public lectures and the blackboard drawings. The spiritual intensity, political goals,
and artistic objects as his principle illustrated on the blackboards were transformed into

the multiple through the felt — the material of spiritual, revolutionary warmth.

Thus, in addition to the representation of Beuys’ idea of politics based on his
theory “expanded concept of art,” these multiples have an aspect of the simultaneously
artistic-spiritual means of transmission. The configuration of Beuys’ multiples involving
both art and politics are not unusual if one traces the German artistic tradition, where the
politicization of culture has changed the artistic landscape enormously. In Germany, “the
aesthetic is the realm of the social.”9 As one can witness in the German Romantic
tradition, for instance, art and the search for spirituality were closely linked to

perceptions of national identity and characteristics in the country.'0 Thus, Beuys’ “idea

 

8 Ronald Feldman, “Noiseless Blackboard Eraser” in mm
(Hirshl & Adler Modern, 1988), 72.

9 Bernice Rose, “Joseph Beuys and the Language of Drawing,” in W;
Wed. Ann Temkin and Bernice Rose (Philadelphia Museum of
Art and Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 73.

‘0 Keith Hartley, “Introduction” in W, eds.
Keith Hartley and others (Thames and Hudson, 1994), 14. For instance, Philip Otto
Runge’s longing for Paradise Lost occurred in the historical moment between French
Revolution and Napoleonic conquest, when German nation looked forward to the end of

63
of politics” has to be examined in terms of his specific political activities, and his

production of multiple objects which demonstrated an “expanded concept of art” as

social, political, and spiritual concerns.

Beuys’ multiples brought with them a medium for Beuys’ other work: that of a
strong link between his direct political activities and a critical element of his art and
spirituality. As a result, his multiples as artistic statements could be expanded to the
problematic political field of the society. The multiples also served as documentation to
the sequences of political events in which Beuys participated, and the production
became an important vehicle for his emphasis on the position as a teacher as well as a
leader of political activities. Beuys’ exploration of multiples became a critical basis for
building bridges between his art and his politics. In the process, Beuys’ persona, which

is also part of the link, was established by the occasions of teaching and party activities.

The Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendum that Beuys
founded in 1971 is one of his key party activities. Beuys’ effort to propagate the party
and its ideas was made through programs of his exhibitions, actions, lectures and

multiples. For example, Beuys passed out shopping bags of informational materials to

 

French occupation and backwards to the Middle Ages and Renaissance when Germany
had been united and a powerful indigenous culture had flourished. Other example is
German Expressionism, where the artists sought to define their own individuality vis-
a- vis French art to which they owed so much formal innovation. Also see Peter-Klaus
Schuster, “In Search of Paradise Lost: Runge— Marc— Beuys,” in W
W, eds. Keith Hartley (Thames and Hudson, 1994).

64

passerby on a street in Cologne. The bag later became a multiple How the dictatorship of
the parties can be overcome, (I971), l0,000 editions (Figure 28),ll containing felt
sculpture and the most important principles of the Organization for the Direct
Democracy through Referendum. The bag was used by Beuys in several actions and
distributed by Beuys at Documenta 5. While How the dictatorship... functioned as a
record of his actions and is a relic of sorts, these are showing “Beuys” as a spiritual
bridge, or transmitter, between people and his idea of politics for the reconstructing of

society as a whole.

The felt sculpture of How the dictatorship... evokes images of protection,
insulation, spiritual and revolutionary warmth identified in Beuys’ theory of sculpture.
Besides, since the material is a fabric of wool, often mixed with fiber or hair, it brings
references to the body.12 Moreover, by the felt sculpture, his plane crash story is
immediately recounted. He once told that fat and felt featured prominently in his work
because of his plane crash experience during World War II. Beuys was rescued by the
Tartars who saved him from death by wrapping him in fat and felt. For the fact which
has assumed near legendary status in accounts of his art and life, although Beuys himself

denied the story as the explanation for his use of felt and fat in a 1980 interview,13 the

 

” With felt sculpture only c. 500 examples. See J6rg Schellmann, ed. Josenhflem
Muhamm(&heflmann Edition 1977)
‘2 Ann Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: An Introduction to his Life and Work” in Ibinkmgia
WWW ed. Ann Temkin and Bernice Rose (Philadelphia
Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 15.
‘3 “Interview with Kate .Horsefield 1980,” in ner l f h r n'

- : : - .. 1, .. ',ed.CarinKuoni(Four

 

65

materials are strongly connected with his mythic biography. As discussed in Chapter 3,
this plane crash anecdote functioned as his personally experienced catastrophes that can
be extended to Germany’s national trauma - the Nazi period. By his wartime experience,
the felt signifies a portrait of the artist as a wounded man, as well as Germany’s Nazi
past, and provided Beuys with the image of a healer. As a result, these multiple
productions conveyed his strong belief in his political activities: “I founded an
Organization for Direct Democracy, concerned with life and death in this country, with
rise and fall.”"‘ Thus, the material embodies various metaphors, and the complexity
accelerates the mystification of his work with his plane crash story. At the same time, it
supports his statements: “politics has to become art, and art has to become politics.
That’s exactly the point I’m making: all human activities have to become art, and they
have to be organized by artists.”15 Endorsing those who can unify art, spirituality,

politics and the artist himself who asserted “a social organism as a work of art”:

EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who - from his state of freedom —
the position of freedom that he experienced at first hand - learns to determine
the other positions in the TOTAL ARTWORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL
ORDER. Self-determination and participation in the cultural sphere (freedom);
in the structuring of laws (democracy); and in the sphere of economics
(socialism). Self-administration and decentralization (threefold structure)
occurs: FREE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.”

 

Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 69.
1“ Joseph Beuys, 1n “Ruben fiber das eigene Land: Deutschland 3,1985” in MM
. . - 1 , :: ., _ - .- : (Inter Naiones Bonn 1986),

 

‘5 Joseph Beuys, “Public Dialogue New York City 197 4 ” in WWII!

Wed» Carin Kuoni. 37
‘6 Joseph Beuys, “I am searching for field character, 1973” W

WesternMan, ed. Carin Kuoni, 22.

66

Beuys answered the question asking whether he was making art of the new politics: “Yes,
surely. Politics has to become art, and art has to become politics. That’s exactly the point
I’m making: all human activities have to become art, and they have to be organized by
artists.”'7 This statement is inevitably demonstrated by his multiple productions: his
identity (or identities) and persona work as the effective indices to the introduction of

politics in the works of art.

Another one of Beuys’ important political activities is his creation of persona
and art — “social sculpture” — as an educator. As a professor of the Dfisseldorf Art
Academy and founder of the Free International University, be regarded his role as a
teacher to be as a kind of spiritual leader who can have an affect on the political system,
including, not only the education system, but the economical and political systems. For
Beuys, thought, speech, and communication that can be exerted over the people from the
position of teacher were all expressions of the free human being. A student, according to
the definition of the German Student Party, is every man whose personal interests lay in
the process of learning and of spiritual development.18 Beuys used academic institutions

as a medium for the political engagement of his works and his persona:

As a teacher, as an informer and an organizer who faces the people, who wishes,
who could be perhaps, some influence in the parliament. That’s my role now, to
inform the people about possibilities, to organize the resistance against the
system, and to organize elections. So I could run for a position in the

 

‘7 Beuys, “Public Dialogue New York City 197 4,” 37 .
‘3 German Student Party Program, June 21, 1968; quoted in Temkin, “Joseph Beuys: An
Introduction to his Life and Work,” 19.

67
parliament. I could, I did it already.19

This intention is clearly evident in his Free International University as a political
activity. In 1972 Beuys founded Free International University (F. I. U.) with his friend
Heinrich Boll. The chief goal was “the encouragement, discovery and furtherance of
democratic potential, and the expression of this.”20 The University was also a co-
founder of the Green Party, established in 1979 and for several years Beuys’ celebrity-
status assisted many fundraising and publicity efforts for the Green Party, which was
“anti-party,” and strongly involved in ecological efforts. Sometimes Beuys himself was
named a candidate for elections for the European Parliament and the West German
Federal Parliament, but he was never successful. He could work politics in art, but he
could never integrate art in politics. Although he was hoping that the party would
influence the existing government to transform the parliamentary structure,2| Beuys was
gradually discouraged by the Green Party which turned into a more traditional political
party and which disliked Beuys’ artistic activities in the party. “The idea of the political
becomes ever more impossible for me.”22 This disappointment signals the difficulties of

the delicate balance between art and politics in the next decades.

Beuys’ commitment to F. I. U. was imperative for the creation of his persona,

 

'9 Joseph Beuys, “I put me on this train! Interview with Art Papier 1979,” in Wu

fartheflesternfilan, ed. Carin Kuoni, 50.
2° Joseph Beuys and Heinrich B611, “Manifesto on the foundation of a “Free International

School for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research,” 1973, in W
flesternMan, ed. Carin Kuoni, 152.
2‘ Joseph Beuys, “Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama: Interview with Lousrien Wijers,

1981,” in E11ergsL121an_to1111911Mesternhlaii,edw Carin Kuoni, 187-

68

as well as his identity. He once talked about F. I. U. as a self-portrait in an interview

regarding his action Is it about a Bicycle? :23

Is it about a Bicycle? Is actually a portrait of the F. I. U., but since the F. I. U. is
the result of my activities, it is possible to call it a self-portrait. It is the portrait
of a complex of ideas which are mine, but to which many individuals
contribute and among whom I am only an actor. One can say that all my work
is a self-portrait which collects all my ideas, the F. I. U., the expansion of art,
direct democracy, scientific freedom, the new economic order, in opposition to
the contemporary state and to all forms of the social order existing today.24

The F. I. U. as a “self-portrait” has significant weight in Beuys’ multiple works where
the FIU logo often appeared. La Zappa (1978), 35 examples, is a hand-wrought hoe
(iron) with a wood handle, branded with the stamp of “FIU+” (Figure 29). Oil Can F] U
(1980), 50+X copies (Figure 30) is a metal container with olive oil, and the logo of
“FIU+.” Vino lv'll/ (1983) (Figure 31), is a red wine bottle with the FIU label, (1,200
copies) and a carton of 12 bottles of red wine (100 copies). The multiples testify to the

9925

fact that “the Free International University is a political movement, offering the
declaration of the personal life of Joseph Beuys as deeply political through the nation’s

Nazi past, by his plane crash myth, and by his involvement in political movements in

the ‘605 and ‘70s

 

22 Beuys, “Ruden uber das eigene Land: Deutschland 3,” 42.

2'3 Is it about a Bicycle? Is the result of a conceptual performance that took place at
Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, Drawing on fifteen blackboards, the artist retraced
his personal history in which life and work are indivisible. Then he climbed on a bicycle
symbolic of his journey through time, and riding over the boards which had been laid out
on the ground, left a pattern of continuous tread marks to bring unity to the work. See

WWW, ed. Claude Logan (Marisa del Re Gallery, 1986).
2“ Joseph Beuys, Interview with the artist in Joseph fin uys; Is it emu t a Bieygl e?, ed.
Claude Logan (Marisa del Re Gallery, 1986), no page number.

25 Joseph Beuys, “I put me on this train! Interview with Art Papier 1979,” 42.

b1

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of

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69

For Beuys, in a time when the Berlin Wall still stood, education was one of the
forms that comprised the “production of spiritual goods” in order to bring a bridge
beyond capitalism and communism that could realize solidarity in economic life: “We
do not need all that we are meant to buy today to satisfy profit based private ,
capitalism.”26 He said, “ in future politics I will play the role of a person who can show
how money, capital, the idea of capital could be changed, away from an understanding
of capital as a changing fate, where everybody’s dignity is exchanged as a commodity,
the so-called salary dependency.”27 Beuys’ intentions sometimes appeared as language
in his multiples. K unst : Kapital (Schein) (1979), 20 examples, is a 10 DM note with a
handwritten text of “Kunst = Kapital” with his sign (Figure 32). “Art = Capital” is part
of his theory that suggests creativity and art are the new currency for the transformation

of society that he envisioned.28

In Beuys’ multiples, the political issues are often broadened into a wider
context such as cultural images and social criticism through the representation of art. As
the concept of economy and politics was expanded into the field of culture, at the same
time, his identity overlapped issues of national identity that he shared with his audience.

Undoubtedly, Beuys’ work had a decisive, artistic influence on art as social energy in

 

“6 Joseph Beuys, quoted in Brenner, “Political Activism,” no page number.

27 Beuys, “I put me on this train! Interview withArt Papier 1979,” 50.

2” Joan Rothfuss, “Creativity,” in W (Walker Art Center, 1997), no
page number.

70

Germany. This significant impact in the mental sense in the art world was achieved
partly by his commitment as an activist artist, with the multiples making strong
connections between the “idea of politics,” art, spirituality and his persona, which were

transformed and transmitted by the carriers:

The idea of politics is inapplicable within the concept of self-administration. Or,
more accurately I do not need to make use of the concept of politics in
everything that I have to say here. It is all logical when describing the essential
nature of the liberation of ability-based work that the basic capacity, the
freedom, must be established, must first be liberated within oneself.29

 

“9 Beuys, “Ruben uber das eigene Land: Deutschland 3”, 47.

71

:3

l

1
.VERVts
CLUB $90.

———I
1&1 DER PEPSI-(01

 

Figure 23 Joseph Beuys Evervess II (1968)

72

 

Figure 24 Joseph Beuys Blackboard 1 (1980)

73

 

Figure 25 Joseph Beuys Letter fiom London (1977)

74

 

Figure 26 Joseph Beuys Postcard: Directional Forces (1977)

75

 

Figure 27 Joseph Beuys Noise/ess Blackboard Eraser (1974)

76

 

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Joseph Beuys

Figure 28

the parties can be overcome (1971)

77

 

Figure 29 Joseph Beuys LaZappa (1.978)”

78

 

Figure 30 Joseph Beuys Oil Can FIU (1980)

79

 

Figure 31 Joseph Beuys Vino FIU (1983)

80

 

Figure 32 Joseph Beuys Kunst .— Capital (Shem) (1979)

 

CHAPTER 5
Conclusion

I am not mystifying the period of my military service. But you know that
mystification is frequently build up around the experience of war: Mainly by
people who question, or show interest, particularly when they come across
references in my biography to my experience with the Tartars, or in connection
with felt and fat. Those are not mystifications intended on my part, but they are
indeed experiences, perhaps in the sense of key experiences. Alternatively they
are contacts, which have played a particular part in my biography'

Joseph Beuys

In his production of multiples, Beuys’ plane crash myth as personally
experienced catastrophe during World War II is undoubtedly working with “contacts,” or
mirrors, which reflect Beuys’ own cultural, spiritual, social, and political containment in
order to situate his identity within and particularly beyond the frame of a self. His war
experience became one of the important arenas of strategic intervention for his identity

and persona.

Although he said he hated Marcel Duchamp, Beuys was one artist who was

fascinated with the intriguing art of that old master. However, like many artists who

 

' Galerie & Edition Shlegl,
i_c_l_1. 1989, 48.

 

82

created multiples in the 60’s and 70’s, the definition of Beuys’ multiple originated from
the artist’s own context based on his artistic goals. While calling them a “vehicle,”
Beuys regarded his multiples as a means of communication that could carry his ideas far
beyond the reach of unique objects. Beuys believed objects communicated in ways that
words could not. The multiples might be the catalyst for a debate or produce a visual
“counter image” regarding his idea and his own image in the front of a viewer’s mind.
These objects challenge one to think in new ways, not only about art, but also about the
world. Beuys’ ambition was to use multiples as informal strategies that performed
outside the mainstream in order to dismantle the fetishization of the handmade art object
that perpetuated the gap between art and life. Buying multiples meant also buying an
idea, and the people who bought Intuition... instead of a cookbook felt like they were
buying more than an empty wooden box. The miniature copies of Beuys’ works and the
relics from his actions, these “object-autograph” of his multiples, acted as antennae for a
wider audience without losing their ‘aura,’ which is perhaps transformed into a more
accessible representational form. Further, spirituality played a significant role in Beuys’
multiples indicating his hopeful vision of himself as an informer or spiritual leader that
sometimes overlapped his position as a teacher. Strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner,
Beuys’ spiritual concern placed Beuys in the German Romantic tradition, and be viewed

the spiritual force as useful for reconstruction of society.

The fact that Beuys viewed multiples as a way of communicating with an

anonymous audience can be seen in his use of photographic imagery in his multiples.

83
The photographic image served as powerful visual propaganda that could convey his
idea and image tightly together. He never used photographic images take by himself; be
utilized images created by other people. In those images, sometimes his personal
experience of trauma was extended to a wider context, such as his plane crash during the
war transformed to the national experience of the Nazi past. For Beuys, the image of
himself reflected in the other has more power than a self-portrait. Here a photographic
image is not used for the representation of reality. Beuys’ life and work are strongly
engaged with the metaphor and artifice of the photograph by representing representation
and by reproducing reproductions. The image that is produced with streaks and spots and
tears can be geared to “statements,” interwoven by the social and national context. This
means that the statement from those images is never finished within the work of art. It
must be carried by the viewer and continue to be translated in the various cultural and

ideological processes in order to be completed.

By his expanded concept of art, Beuys asserted that all human creation —
whether social, political, economic or spiritual — has to become art. His idea of politics
has a strong connection with his direct political activities that could also be realm of
culture. Beuys’ view of politics is again influenced by Rudolf Steiner. Beuys’
blackboard drawings that appeared as multiple productions show the importance of
Anthoroposophy in Beuys’ political, economic, and artistic goals. In his specific
political activities, Beuys established his position as a transmitter, and spiritual bridge,

and the use of materials such as felt created a critical link between his idea of politics,

84

art and himself. He is not an exceptional case in the German tradition, where the issues
of the aesthetic and art have always overlapped with ideological issues. By introducing
his life into art, Beuys’ political activities and his persona became inseparable. Beuys’
political diagram is clear in his multiples functioning both as his political statements and
as records of his political activities. The educational institution provided Beuys with a
stage for his political activities, and multiples supported his creation of identity, which is
primarily a matter of position in the social context. The FIU logo in the multiple

production can be seen as an extension of the artist’s self.

The hybrid nature of Beuys’ multiple production - their ability to be duplicated
and to cany spirituality and originality — has made Beuys’ persona accessible to a much
wider audience. His plane crash functioned as a catalyst for his self-transformation into a
production possessed by a public. “Beuys” as idea or as a thought represented in
multiples was supported by Beuys’ theory of “social sculpture,” and by his experience of
war as an autobiography that can also be a key to the national identity. The artist
demonstrated that art could not be separated from the sociopolitical context where he
worked. Beuys’ multiples could stand not only for his audience, but also for himself.
The objects encouraged minds to create new society and self. Through connections,
transformations, and metamorphosis performed by Beuys’ multiples, his art led to
exercising its individual creative freedom. For his audience and himself, Beuys stood as

a transmitter in the process.

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