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The Joseph Beuys e-Mail Review - A dialogue between Karen Achten and Thorsten Scheerer [Version 1.1]
Edited by Thorsten Scheerer and Klaus Dieter Schönfeldt. Published by Athena on http://home.pages.de/~athena/ in March 1996. Athena e-text registration: ath-ep963/ach
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© 1996 by Karen Achten and Thorsten Scheerer. All rights reserved.
THE JOSEPH BEUYS E-MAIL REVIEW
A dialogue between Karen Achten and Thorsten Scheerer
Dear,
my name is Karen Achten & I'm from Belgium. I will be graduating from art school this year & I have to write a graduating paper about the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. I've read lots of books about him but since I never had philosophy & because the books are all in German, I'm having lots of problems understanding Beuys' Plastic Theory.
Please help me to understand this better (the people of Fluxus gave me your pages as a ref.). I wrote lots of mails allready, but I never recieved a really satisfying answer, please help, I'm despaired.
Thank you in advance,
sincerely,
Karen Achten (Belgium) [1]
Dear Karen,
thanks a lot for your reguest! I'll give you a short summary on what it (Beuys' theory) is about. I do not know, what you allready know about Beuys, so if you need more detailed information and/or have further questions, do not hesitate to send me mail!
Beuys' plastic theory is not about plastic/sculpture in the traditional sense. It's about form. In Beuys' opinion, the central question of art is the question for the most suitable form. This means that _everything_ is a question of art, because _everything_ has to have a certain form: politics, communication, TV sets, words, e-mails... All you can imagine. But the question for the most suitable form does usually not occur until one has to work with real material. However, at first, there is a thought, an idea. The process to create a sculpture therefore emerges right the moment you get an idea. Ideas have to be shaped, constructed, put into form, just like material works.
If works of art are the most sublime, worthy, and pleasent objects human beings are able to produce and love to own, look at and live with, human societies would be more comfortable for everyone of us, if we would begin to think, work, talk, behave, etc. with regard to the question for the most suitable form - in short: it's a question of art.
Consequences are that artists should face the fact that the objects they create are a kind of experiment that will lead to much greater opportunities (see below), and due to the fact that every human being thinks, has ideas, works, shapes material objects (no matter what) - and by doing that is responsible for all other humans, thus he/she is influencing the others' environment and changing its state - the general and most challenging subject in human lifes is the Social Sculpture.
And, _most important_, you can't get beyond.. Living on this planet, in a society, _everything_ you do, every idea you have, all the stuff you create, every conversation you have (sending mail to Athena, too) shifts the state of the environment, creates form - therefore is sculpture..! You are responsible - no way out. So take your life as a work of art with regard to society - the Social Sculpture.
Yours,
Thorsten Scheerer [2]
Dear Thorsten,
first of all I would like to excuse myself for my late reply, but there was something wrong with our computer, I hope you understand. You asked me if you could add the mail conversation..., with pleasure, I would say. If I can help anyone by doing this, it will be my pleasure.
Your information was very helpful, it was a good review of his theory, but I'm afraid that it is not enough. I'm very into Beuys, if you know what I mean, and I need more specific information.
Beuys was a great man with a very active mind, he could sell his work by the theory around that certain work. He was also very interested in the metaphysics - the knowlege of what we don't know, the knowledge of the other world. [3]
Hmmm... The topic's not so simple... In Beuys' perspective, it would be more correct to say "...the knowledge of what we have forgotten, the knowledge of the former world." It's a very comprehensive theme. Well, here I go - a short description:
Beuys' understanding of man's history was a history of thoughts, of philosophy - spiritual evolution. So let's have a look at it: Since the mysteries of the antiquity, from Aristotle to the late Middle Ages, man never completely existed on earth (Sounds strange, ..eh?), for the reason that in these times man considered himself guided by God. Man consisted of soul, spirit and body. Man was created as an image of God.
But from the 16th to 18th century a change emerged, the most important philosophers were René Descartes and Immanuel Kant. Later on, materialism occured and man began to describe himself as materia, as a biological body - no soul, no spirit, just quantities.
Beuys called this "the complete incarnation process", because by becoming a matter of atoms and countable materia and by narrowing his view to materialistic science, man reached the ground, the earth, completely. This kind of suicide, Beuys explained, as a consequence of man's analytical thinking led man to the Mystery of Golgatha (the hill, where Jesus was crucified). In materialism, man is dead, crucified by himself on the Cartesian coordinates.
The possibility and necessity that occurs is to rise like Jesus did. Man killed God (Nietzsche wrote in Zarathustra that we still could see God's blood on our hands), man killed himself... The consequence is that for the first time man stands on earth in freedom, not guided by anyone, but himself. He will be the one he will create (J. P. Sartre).
This is what Beuys meant with the "evolution principle". Man has to create himself. He has to be his own God - has to create his dignity by himself. (keyword: the will to create; the will to power/Nietzsche.) So man has to re-invent what he has forgotten by cutting it out of his self-description.
There's a drawing by Beuys: "Evolution" (1974, pencil, privat collection of Volker Harlan, Bochum) that shows what I tried to describe. A detail of it shows (from left to right) the words "Christus", "Plazenta", "Myth.", "Aristoteles" - "Christuskreuz" (a cube and Cartesian coordinates below) - "Sonnenstaat". [4]
I think you can feel it coming, some other questions:
You are able to see traditional sculptures - bronze, wood, steel..., but you can't see ideas, allthough they can be/should be worked out as if they were real material. You may refer to Beuys' drawing "Partitur fuer Dieter Koepplin" (1969, privat collection, Munich). It shows - from left to right - a process: