Page 43 - Studio International - September 1970

My wife and I spent a summer holiday in Spain with Beuys and his
wife. It was in the south of Spain, inland, a long way from any water,
amid wide stretches of vineyards, with dry, crumbling soil. It was a
strange, dusty, heat-shimmering landscape. We stayed with some vine-
growers who rented us a courtyard with the various surrounding
buildings, some of which were in partial or total disrepair. The owners,
two vinegrowers, had moved out into a sort of outhouse block—although,
as I say, it was hard to distinguish between one section of that complex
of outhouses and another. Beuys had a chest complaint and was in a
very poor state; that was in fact why we had come to this place. One
day I went to the nearest town and heard a conversation between the
local doctor, whom Beuys had consulted, and our two vinegrowers,
who were always together. The doctor told one of them that, if his wife
went on using this apparatus, the consequences for the foreigner might
be very serious.
Far from all houses, out in the hazy, dusty landscape, they had set up a
large tent. One like Roman generals have in film epics. In this lay the
dying Beuys. They were probably scared of infection. A long way from
the tent stood the vinegrowers with their wives. One of the wives was
weeping and wailing so loudly that the sound reached the little group
that stood at the end of the tent. Beuys, who could hardly see, my wife,
who sobbed all the time, and myself. Beuys lay in the tent with his head
more or less out in the open; the tent was house-shaped, and one end
had been removed. His body was covered with a sheet, and his head
was partly covered by a paper bag with holes cut out for the eyes. The
whole lower half of his face was ravaged by disease, eaten away, so that
only his upper teeth, with the skin drawn tight over them, projected.
Stuck in what had been his mouth were five or six cigars, no doubt
because he liked cigars. With his eyes he signalled to his wife to come to
him, and he lifted his head so that she could put her hand beneath it.
That was his last gesture of love. He said to me, in a strange voice
produced somewhere deep in his throat, that his life as an artist was
shorter than we believed, less than a year, and that he was departing
with a feeling of horror and paralysis at his own fate.
PER KIRKEBY
From a German version by Henning Christiansen.
Written in Danish, published in 2,15, Borgen Forlag, Copenhagen 1966.