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Lot Essay
'We had breakfast with Joseph Beuys, he insisted I come to his house and see his studio and the way he lives and have tea and cake, it was really nice. He gave me a work of art which was two bottles of effervescent water which ended up exploding in my suitcase and damaging everything I have, so I can't open the box now, because I don't know if it's a work of art anymore or just broken bottles. So if he comes to New York I've got to get him to come and sign the box because it's just a real muck' (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett (ed.), ‘Sunday 8 March 1981, Dusseldorf’, in The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 361).
In Joseph Beuys C Andy Warhol consecrates the image of his fellow artist in his most recognisable traits: his magnetic, penetrating gaze and signature felt hat. The work is composed of four identical bright red photographic portraits, silk-screened onto a canvas fashioned from a laundry bag. With its iconic grid format and hypnotic employment of repetition, the work is a signature example of Warhol’s investigation into celebrity culture. This time however it is not a movie star to fall under Warhol’s mythologizing touch, but an artist he felt a connection with at a level that goes beyond artistic practice. When the two artists first met 'officially' in May 1979, the auspiciousness of the occasion was duly observed. 'For those who witnessed the two men approaching each other across the polished granite floor' David Galloway recalled, 'the moment had all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon' (D. Galloway, 'Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks,' in Art in America, July 1988, p. 121). It was on this occasion that Warhol took his customary polaroids of Beuys. With his special irony, Warhol remembers one of their encounters in these words: ‘We had breakfast with Joseph Beuys, he insisted I come to his house and see his studio and the way he lives and have tea and cake, it was really nice. He gave me a work of art which was two bottles of effervescent water which ended up exploding in my suitcase and damaging everything I have, so I can't open the box now, because I don't know if it's a work of art anymore or just broken bottles. So if he comes to New York I've got to get him to come and sign the box because it's just a real muck (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett (ed.), ‘Sunday 8 March 1981, Dusseldorf’, in The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 361).
Beuys had always been very wary of America – its capitalist values and cultural imperialism being the cause of much conflict in his native Germany – and as a consequence, he did not travel to or exhibit in the United States very often. For his famous healing performance/encounter with a coyote – a symbol of the ancient unspoiled pre-Columbian America – in a New York Gallery in 1974, he had insulated himself from everything to do with the United States by having himself delivered to the gallery in an ambulance and wrapped entirely in felt. This action Beuys appropriately, if also somewhat humorously, named I like America and America likes me. It is an ironic title that could also be applied to his relationship with Warhol.
Executed in 1980, Joseph Beuys C is a portrait of Beuys as a phenomenon and a myth in very much the same way as Warhol was mythologising himself in his own shadow self-portraits at this time. Both artists had succeeded by this time in gaining a shamanic (for Beuys) and mythical (for Warhol) status, and both were, and indeed still are, considered by many to be the twin giants of American and European Post-War art. A fitting tribute, clearly demonstrates Warhol's respect for Beuys as both man and artist. It was a respect that was clearly mutual. Over the next few years, until Beuys' death in 1986, Beuys and Warhol would meet cordially and maintain a wary but respectful friendship even though their art and its outlook on life would remain distinctly different. Joseph Beuys C witnesses the historic significance of this muted and cordial relationship between these two figureheads of late-twentieth century art.
In Joseph Beuys C Andy Warhol consecrates the image of his fellow artist in his most recognisable traits: his magnetic, penetrating gaze and signature felt hat. The work is composed of four identical bright red photographic portraits, silk-screened onto a canvas fashioned from a laundry bag. With its iconic grid format and hypnotic employment of repetition, the work is a signature example of Warhol’s investigation into celebrity culture. This time however it is not a movie star to fall under Warhol’s mythologizing touch, but an artist he felt a connection with at a level that goes beyond artistic practice. When the two artists first met 'officially' in May 1979, the auspiciousness of the occasion was duly observed. 'For those who witnessed the two men approaching each other across the polished granite floor' David Galloway recalled, 'the moment had all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon' (D. Galloway, 'Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks,' in Art in America, July 1988, p. 121). It was on this occasion that Warhol took his customary polaroids of Beuys. With his special irony, Warhol remembers one of their encounters in these words: ‘We had breakfast with Joseph Beuys, he insisted I come to his house and see his studio and the way he lives and have tea and cake, it was really nice. He gave me a work of art which was two bottles of effervescent water which ended up exploding in my suitcase and damaging everything I have, so I can't open the box now, because I don't know if it's a work of art anymore or just broken bottles. So if he comes to New York I've got to get him to come and sign the box because it's just a real muck (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett (ed.), ‘Sunday 8 March 1981, Dusseldorf’, in The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 361).
Beuys had always been very wary of America – its capitalist values and cultural imperialism being the cause of much conflict in his native Germany – and as a consequence, he did not travel to or exhibit in the United States very often. For his famous healing performance/encounter with a coyote – a symbol of the ancient unspoiled pre-Columbian America – in a New York Gallery in 1974, he had insulated himself from everything to do with the United States by having himself delivered to the gallery in an ambulance and wrapped entirely in felt. This action Beuys appropriately, if also somewhat humorously, named I like America and America likes me. It is an ironic title that could also be applied to his relationship with Warhol.
Executed in 1980, Joseph Beuys C is a portrait of Beuys as a phenomenon and a myth in very much the same way as Warhol was mythologising himself in his own shadow self-portraits at this time. Both artists had succeeded by this time in gaining a shamanic (for Beuys) and mythical (for Warhol) status, and both were, and indeed still are, considered by many to be the twin giants of American and European Post-War art. A fitting tribute, clearly demonstrates Warhol's respect for Beuys as both man and artist. It was a respect that was clearly mutual. Over the next few years, until Beuys' death in 1986, Beuys and Warhol would meet cordially and maintain a wary but respectful friendship even though their art and its outlook on life would remain distinctly different. Joseph Beuys C witnesses the historic significance of this muted and cordial relationship between these two figureheads of late-twentieth century art.