A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: December 1, 2004
Latest Update: December 1, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Backup of Joseph Beuys; Myth of Living DeathThis backup copy is to be used only if the original site on the Web is not accessible. It is meant to preserve the document for teaching purposes, when sometimes the URLS are changed when sites are updated, or sites are eliminated. Please be certain to give credit if you refer to this to the original URL: http://www.a-studio.nl/en/writings/myth/. Original URL, consulted: Month Day, 2004.Joseph Beuys; Myth of Living Death
The myth of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was mainly created by the artist himself and is an integral part of his life's work. Next to some 15,000 artworks, Beuys also created his own cult, mythology and doctrine. There we find his will to heal the weak (he planned to be a doctor until that ambition was blocked by his tour of duty in war), to help outcasts (as a professor he selected only students that had been refused), to teach creativity as a synonym for freedom and life. We see masks of the doctor, the shaman (medicine man), the martyr, the herdsman, the messiah! We get to meet the person that 'miraculously returned out of death' (his plain crashed above Krim), 'leads us through the night' and - yes - 'dies out of Love'. So Beuys' mythology goes all the way and repeats every single act and feature of Jesus Christ! And despite all that he is still a shaman. The artist shows animals (animal derives from anima, body; as opposed to animus, mind), not people. Lifeless nature is represented by poor and preferably primitive materials like grease, felt, fur, honey, copper, wood, blood. All show traces of degradation by processes of the chemical, physical, biological, mechanical kind. In performances the artist talks with dead bodies (How one explains art to a dead hare). In conversations he knows the 'Material Truth' and hears the 'Speech of Things'. For all of his works goes that the dead and lifeless are quite much alive, while life rather seems to be haunted by death! Beuys appeals to religion, but without God as man's best friend. He is a shaman with an obviously degraded view on civilization and mankind. Beuys renders decay everywhere he can: no culture but nature, no humanism but animism, no perspective on life but the pregnant atmospheres of death.
Hajo Schilperoort, 2001
