Lot 29

It is generally agreed that Joseph Beuys is the most influential European avant-garde artist since 1960. Though possessing this reputation, his work is little known or understood in the United States. Beuys, himself, stood in the way for many years. He refused to accept invitations to visit America until 1974, in protest against its participation in the Vietnam War. Until then, what little critical writing appeared in English generally and incorrectly relegated him to being a late European convert to the American Minimalist movement. In fact, Beuys was a forerunner of Minimalist appearances, yet as far from its content as possible. The breakthrough that did occur to the small appreciation of Beuys in the United States only began at the time of his omnibus 1979 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. That showing left many viewers deeply touched and curious about this apparently nomadic artist. Still, even after that exhibition, a deeper knowledge of Beuys eluded most viewers in this country for many more years. Indeed, he was generally thought of as some outlandish mystic who had little relevance to the canon of art history. Meanwhile, since 1979, many of Beuys's followers, admirers, and contemporaries, especially Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Janis Kounellis, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter would achieve enormous attention, with Beuys remaining in the shadows. Beuys thought of himself chiefly as a sculptor, though to be precise, one finds all manner of two-dimensional work, glass covered ensembles of objects [Iroom-sized environments. Throughout, Beuys made highly poetic combinations of images and materials; indeed, perhaps above all else, he was a collagist. He particularly loved to use discarded and even degrading materials of every variety, this to evoke both a forsaken land as well as the humblest possibilities that exist for art making. Beuys's oeuvre is like a giant whirlwind of activity in which each aspect feeds another. Hence, the objects used in a performance could become part of a Vitrine; one of the blackboards used in a lecture, of which there were many, would afterward become an independent work of art. As one of the founders of the Green Party, Beuys wanted all of his art activity to serve a larger purpose, though politics specifically was not his aim. Rather, he held utopian ideas about the future of mankind, for example claiming "everyone an artist." If one was fortunate enough to be in Europe in the two years after Beuys's death in 1986, and to see the outpouring of extraordinary exhibitions about him and his followers, one would have begun to understand Beuys's position on that continent. He demonstrated that art drenched in the experience of being a German and a European in the Post-War period was an extremely worthy pursuit. Beuys's ramshackle vocabulary gave a nomenclature to other Germans and Italians (chiefly the Arte Povera group) that an alternative existed to the slick appearance of American art. Uninterested in producing an art about art, he was an activist, who believed that art had a higher calling, and could even change the world. Such a notion gave permission to a host of European artists to imagine a distinction between their history and ambition and that of their American counterparts. Beuys was not an artist outside the mainstream. He established the European avant-garde mainstream along side the ubiquitous force and example of American art. Property of a Private German Collection

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)

Eisenkiste aus Vakuum--Masse

Details

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)
Eisenkiste aus Vakuum--Masse
stamped with signature, date and inscription 'JOSEPH BEUYS 1968 INHALT 100 KG FETT 100 LUFTPUMPEN' (on the top)
Iron, fat and bicycle pumps
Height: 22 in. (55.9 cm.)
Width: 43 in. (109.2 cm.)
Depth: 21¼ in. (54 cm.)
Executed in 1968

Provenance

Helmut Rywelski, Galerie Art Intermedia, Cologne.
Josef Wendker, Herten, acquired from the above, 1968.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

U.M. Schneede, Joseph Beuys Die Aktionen, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1994, pp. 206-215, no. 16, (illustrated, pp. 211-215).

Exhibited

Cologne, Art intermedia, Joseph Beuys. Zeichnungen und Objekte, December 1968-January 1969.
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Joseph Beuys, November 1979 -January 1980, Station 11, p. 115, pl. 172 (illustrated).
Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum und Museumsverein, Kreuz + Zeichen. Religivse Grundlagen im Werk von Joseph Beuys, August-September 1985, p. 90, no. 25 (illustrated, pl. 103).
Paris, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne?, July-October 1986, p. 212, no. 241 (illustrated).
Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Joseph Beuys. Skulpturen und Objekte, February-May 1988, p. 189, no. 54 (illustrated).
Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Joseph Beuys-Natur Materie Form, November 1991-February 1992, p. 247, no. 369 (illustrated, pl. 192.)

Sale room notice

Please note the complete provenance:

Helmut Rywelski, Galerie Art Intermedia, Cologne.
Josef Wendker, Herten, acquired from the above, 1968.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Lot Essay

Eisenkiste (Iron chest) from the action Vakum--Masse, 1968, was chosen by Beuys to be one of the stopping points Stations) on the Guggenheim Museum ramp in his 1979 exhibition, and in the accompanying catalogue. This major work touches on some of the central practices in his art. The object had first been used in a performance Beuys did the same year, during which he filled the iron chest with fat and 100 bicycle pumps, then welded it shut. This combination of a living, ostensibly waste material with a metallic human invention is typical of the kind of juxtaposition he favored. Beuys would have imagined a chemical reaction between the two that would give birth to something very worthwhile, all this as a kind of alchemical model by which the world is improved. After the performance, Beuys used the Eisenkiste in a number of exhibitions, with it becoming a signature work in his sculptural oeuvre.

Beuys's interests in creating Eisenkiste are multiple. Like Marcel Duchamp's With Hidden Noise, 1916, it has a mysterious quality that can only be unraveled with knowledge of his work; of course, unlike Duchamp, Beuys deliberately does allow for the mystery to be solved, publishing the history of the sculpture in the Guggenheim catalogue. (About Duchamp, Beuys famously stated that his "silence is overrated.") But Beuys has his own allusive mystery in that the shape of the chest is a half-cross, symbolic of a form yearning for completion. Beuys used this shape on numerous occasions, especially to suggest the imperfect condition of Germany and Europe, and the need for spiritual wholeness.

Fig. 1 From Aktion "Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt", Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, 1965

Fig. 2 Beuys in Aktion "Vacuum--Maase'

Fig. 3 Marcel Duchamp, With Hidden Noise, 1916, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Eisenkiste aus Vakuum--Masse

Lot Essay

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