Page 24 - Studio International - September 1971

educationally for a girl student to raise her to say blind hatred, which is aroused by the fact
children better than for her to become an artist : that art here leaves its rationally secure function
this sort of thing irritated the Establishment all of compensation and becomes a weapon against
the more keenly, in that overheated year of 1968, the positivist view of the world.
because it was impossible to overlook the fact The dividing line between the pro-Beuys and
that more and more students were coming to anti-Beuys camps does not correspond to that
Beuys, and more and more artists working along between left and right in politics. As the central
the same lines. Beuys is now the best-known and factor is a theory, a working hypothesis for a new
the most sought-after German artist on the life, I am not going to attempt to interpret
international art scene—more famous abroad individual works; and as this theory has hitherto
than any German avant-garde artist has ever always been expressed either in a provocatively
been in his own lifetime. In the summer aphoristic manner or with reference to a specific
semester this year, 30o students enrolled for his reference was to—and then the universality of theme, I shall try, with the aid of quotations
course; the normal size of classes at the Beuys's aspirations was revealed. The public from a series of taped conversations with Joseph
Kunstakademie is between ten and twenty. debate on Beuys got under way only when his Beuys, to sum up his political and philosophical
Since the Impressionists it has been nothing theory became known. As long as society could ideas for the first time.
new for artists to provoke hostility. Always, fit Beuys into purely aesthetic categories, it
however, it was the picture or the sculpture displayed the same tolerant curiosity about him Beuys takes as his point of departure the fact that
itself, the optical form given to a new as it did about the avant garde as a whole. For in the course of European history an idea of
interpretation of the world, that gave offence. the enfants terribles had taken a rise out of society knowledge has developed which tends, by virtue
The theory behind it was often not formulated once too often: the avant garde was now of its analytical method, in the direction of
verbally at all par else it was given no serious complaining that society refused to be shocked positivism. A direct line runs from Aristotle to
consideration. The only thing that counted, the any more, and that it took everything the materialism of the nineteenth century.
only thing that was judged, was the work itself. patronizingly in its stride. The spectacle of the Matter, with all its laws, is the 'content' of the
In the same way, Beuys's rooms with piles of felt, public dividing into two warring camps, not over universe. Over the years this interpretation has
copper tubing and 'grease angles', or the an artist's work but over his theory, was been spelt out in increasing detail, but the
`actions' in which nothing happens except time, something new in the history of art. fundamental method remains the same. Beuys
in which the motionless Beuys and the motionless Man and material as transmitter and receiver; does not, however, regard formal logic, the
spectator become the instruments of an invisible man finding in his environment a quality of mathematical interpretation of the environment,
relationship—all this met with approbation or self-determination which is not inherent in it; as a final answer but as an 'intermediate
rejection in the same way as other artistic events man leaving behind as spiritual excrement the situation' which the technocrats are trying to
of the 196os. At most, the public became more compulsions of the material, which have led to perpetuate. The experimental method of the
excited or more irritated than in other objects—all this has become accepted as part of Renaissance gave increased freedom to the
environments and Happenings, because the the artistic process of elucidation. But for Beuys bourgeoisie; Beuys sees the French Revolution
putrefaction of the fossil-like objects, the ascetic art no longer means life symbolically; it means as a manifestation, and an implied objective, of
inchoateness of the interiors, and the dramatic life directly. In the past one could say: 'Life has experimentalist thought. It was as a result of this
eventlessness of the actions, all convey very changed, so art must change'. Now, on the particular scientific concept that the bourgeoisie
clearly that these things are merely the visible contrary, art is the instrument for changing life. achieved power and created a social order based
end of something else. The whole of Beuys's Hence the enthusiasm, verging on fanaticism, on the division of labour. And when the worst of
activity consisted of references. The idea of art with which it is proclaimed that art is no longer the negative results involving the proletariat have
as a 'work', or as a visible event, was no longer an aim in itself, no longer a conservatory outside been ironed out, the bourgeois instinct for self-
adequate. People were perturbed; they wanted the window through which society sees a better preservation can continue to thrive by virtue of
to know what did lie behind it all, what the sunrise. Hence, too, the powerful antipathy, not technocracy. For the two basic ideas of
bourgeois society, the division of labour and the
4
leading role of science, are extended by the
technocrats to the whole of human society—
although this extension no longer serves man but
only the perpetual technological revolution. The
functionalism of bourgeois positivist science is
developed, at the expense of toiling humanity,
into an end in itself. Revolution,
experimentation, scientific objectivity—these
concepts once performed a liberating function in
the struggle against feudal, clerical and other
autocracies; now they are turning into an
autocracy in their own right, which sets out to
thwart the evolutionary process leading to the
liberation of man.
Beuys sees the devil, not in technology itself,
but in its use of its power to deprive man of
the right—even the possibility—of self-
determination. The idea that man is a product of
his environment is in Beuys's view a half-truth
employed to keep the power-structure of a
man-made environment exactly as it is. This is
where Beuys's much-maligned link with Early
Christianity is to be found. Beuys maintains that
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