Joseph Beuys

Warhol's famous diamond dust portrait of Joseph Beuys has something of the epic and the adulatory about it. It is an aspect that is not at all inappropriate for a portrait of an artist whose status within his own lifetime was such that he inspired followers, devotees, and believers amongst what was a broad and ever-widening entourage. Beuys' reputation and the shamanic example he set as an artist concerned with the social reform of the world rather than with mere aesthetics or the history of art gained him an almost mystical status in the eyes of many. By the late 1970s, although recent critical attention to his mid-1970s work had grown increasingly cold, Warhol too, had been enshrined as a god in the pantheon of twentieth century art. Both artists were, and indeed still are, considered by many to be the twin giants of American and European Post-War art. Today, the names 'Beuys' and 'Warhol' signify as much a worldview and a phenomenon as they do each artist's work or person.

Aware of this and of each other's status as the high-priests of two very different but not at all fundamentally opposed systems of art-making, their meeting and indeed the manner of it took on a greater significance than either man would have wanted. Surprisingly, the two artists did not meet until 1979. 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.

According to David Bourdon, when the two artists first met 'officially' in May 1979 at Hans Mayer's gallery in Düsseldorf, the auspiciousness of the occasion was duly observed. 'For those who witnessed the two men approaching each other across the polished granite floor' one writer recalled,' the moment had all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon.' (David Galloway, 'Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks,' in: Art in America, July 1988, p. 121) Bourdon also says that it was on this occasion that Warhol took his customary polaroids of Beuys; the pictures which would later form the basis of his celebrated portraits of the German artist. In contrast Heiner Bastian has said that these polaroids were taken at his own instigation when the two artists met in New York in November 1979 for the occasion of Beuys' retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim. Either way, Warhol, as his diary records, was busy working on the first portraits of Beuys in January 1980 and went on to create three different versions: black on black, black on white and, as in the case of this large version from 1981, 'black' (in fact a dark Prussian blue) and red. The latter two types also used a negative 'reversal' image of Beuys in a way that emphasized the 'mythic' status of the artist and were sprinkled with 'diamond dust.'

Warhol's use of 'diamond dust' (in fact a form of ground glass provided by Warhol's assistant Ronnie Cutrone) was first used in his Shadow paintings of 1979 where it lent these enigmatic works a further layer of ambiguity, by reflecting light and shadows on the surface of the canvas. Later applied to his Shoes as well as to his portraits of Beuys, it added to these works the glittering aura of stardust as well as an enigmatic and mysterious quality, that was perhaps more appropriate in the case of Beuys. Always maintaining an eye towards the iconic, Warhol's reversal portraits of Beuys present the German artist in his full mystical glory. Turning the artist into a star, without slipping into the kitsch that had categorised such works as his celebrity portraits, Warhol shows Beuys, donning his customary felt hat and sleeveless jacket, with his face, glittering with stardust emerging like an apparition from a bleak dark background. It is a portrait of 'Beuys - the phenomenon' and 'Beuys - the myth' in very much the same way as Warhol was mythologising himself in his own shadow self-portraits at this time. A fitting tribute, the portrait 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. The nature of this muted and cordial relationship between these two figureheads of late twentieth century art is one of historic significance and will no doubt excite the curiosity of historians of art and culture for many years. It is one that is perhaps best described by the following anecdote recorded in Warhol's diary for Sunday 8th March, 1981 in Dusseldorf. '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' (Pat Hackett (ed.), The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 361).