Everyone Is An Artist

Joseph Beuys

May 13, 2018– February 28, 2019

Everyone Is an Artist

Joseph Beuys

May 13, 2018– February 28, 2019

Everyone Is an Artist

Contents 02

Joseph Beuys

04

Broom and Broom without Hair

06

Cross Slide

08

Rose for Direct Democracy

10

Two Maidens with Shining Bread

12

Rhine Water Polluted

14

I Nourish Myself Through Waste of Energy

Joseph Beuys 01

02

Joseph Beuys (12 May 1921–23 January 1986) was a German Fluxus, happening, and performance artist as well as a painter, sculptor, medallist, installation artist graphic artist, art theorist, and pedagogue.

His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his “extended definition of art” and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative,participatory role in shaping society and politics. His career was characterized by open public debates on a very wide range of subjects including political, environmental,social and long term cultural trends. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century.

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1972

Broom and Broom without Hair 02

04

The performance art cleaning presented in the Herrmann square in Neukolln district in Berlin on May 1, 1972 shot the film for record. Beuys waited for the procession with a broad broom in his hand; then he began to clean the square and swept up all things thrown by passersby and parade. They collected valueless junk in others’ insignificant attention so as to make the “travelling direction” promising. Performance actors waved the brooms like writing strokes on the empty square and repeated thousands of times of movement, cleaning and interpreting the environment. An individual hinted the daily life, urban life and group performance and activated the “opposite space”where other things happen and converted it to the spiritual theater for the sake of most people’s behavior and doing this by distinguishing the career.

Vitrine 3 Bronze sculpture “Broom without Hair”.Aerugo horsehair bro0m coated with silver with a thickness of 1mm.

“If you want to express yourself you must present something tangible. But after a while this has only the function of a historic document. Objects are not very important any more. I want to get to the origin of matter, to the thought behind it.”

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1972

Cross Slide 03

06

The idea of cross division is related to Beuys’s “Eurasia conception”.

Eurasia is a piece of land that connects Europe and Asia and separates the world into East and West in political terms. While Beuys proposed that there are “Oriental Peo-ple” and “Western People”in the world on its basis. Cross division symbolizes equal distribution and the new unification at the same time. Beuys considers that “Western People”think about things with reasons and analysis and value highly science and technology, while “Oriental People”, on the contrary, are dominated by intuition and visual thinking and fill the world with contemplations. Half cross represents the abandon of such kind of contrariety and the possibility to combine those two types of abilities in people. That is the essential intention in Beuys’s thinking and works.

Vitrine 3 Phosphorous Cross-Slide, 1972

07

1973

Rose for Direct Democracy 04

In Documenta 5(1972), Beuys’s office was adorned with a rose symbolizing realizing the direct democracy through the referendum. Since then, the fresh rose has appeared in his political office repeatedly and also on his desk during the panel discussion.

From 1979, Beuys set the 3rd room as the office of the international institute of creative and interdisciplinary research. There has been display once in a while and it remains true today.

In Documenta, a measuring glass was put on the desk of the information office and used as a rose vase. Afterwards, the measuring glass was labelled as “direct demoratic rose” and included in the combined work.

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Vitrine 1 Fresh rose in the water in a measuring glass, Rose for Direct Democracy, 1973.

“We can appear in the image of coronation as a real king.

At the same time, this broad concept of sovereignty is the highest form of democracy.”

09

1966

Two Maidens with Shining Bread 05

Beuys talked to Jörg Schellman about his work in 1970: this is a direct reference to the spiritual nature of matter. Bread as a substance represents the essence of human nourishment. The term “shining bread” means that the bread has its origins in the spiritual realm. Man does not live by bread alone, but by the spirit.

Just like transubstantiation, the transformation of the Host, according to old church custom; where it is said that it only looks like bread, but in reality it is Christ.

Instead of bread, chocolate is used here. The chocolate undergoes a transformation, in a certain way connected with the shining bread and by means of a sort of counterimage. Chocolate has been manipulated, that it is painted with brown paint, this brown has the same colour as the chocolate itself.

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Vitrine 7 Collage of offset print, chocolate, oil (Browncross), card, paper, 1971.

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1981

Rhine Water Polluted 06

Joseph Beuys’s ordinary-looking clear bottle filled with nastylooking polluted Rhine water (1981) drives home an ecological point you wouldn’t get by gazing at the river itself. (The water was also regarded by Beuys as a talisman for change; it is shown with a couple of flasks of commercially bottled holy water from Lourdes.)

The bottle of green Rhine water.

The color changes to orange under to the influence of oxidation. The label was printed with computer and sealed with oil paint (brown cross). This work was born in an environmental performance art at Uriburu, besides Rhine, Düsseldorf, under the joint efforts with Joseph Beuys in No.3 Room of Academy of Arts on September 28,1981.

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Vitrine 2 The Rhine Water Polluted, 1981

“Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.”

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1978

I Nourish Myself Through Waste of Energy 07

The quality of life exists in desistance but not predation, since the latter damages our internal life and awareness to the future. We must abandon the thinking of occupying things. There is great value in desistance. There is gold in it the gold of thinking: human being’s purity.

—Joseph Beuys

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Vitrine 4 I Nourish Myself through Waste of Energy , 1978

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Credits tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-beuys-747 theartstory.org/artist/beuys-joseph/artworks/ sohu.com/a/209154310_307993 wikiart.org/en/joseph-beuys