German artist Joseph Beuys: biography. How to explain pictures to a dead hare Boyce how to explain pictures to a dead hare

Wikipedia gives this information about him:
Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld (North Rhine-Westphalia) on May 12, 1921 in the family of a merchant. He spent his childhood in Kleve near the Dutch border. During World War II he served in aviation. The beginning of his "personal mythology", where the fact is inseparable from the symbol, was the winter of 1943, when his plane was shot down over the Crimea. The frosty "Tatar steppe", as well as melted fat and felt, with which locals saved him, preserving bodily warmth, predetermined the figurative structure of his future works. Returning to service, he also fought in Holland. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British. In 1947-1951 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, where the sculptor E. Matare was his main mentor. The artist, who received the title of professor at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1961, was fired in 1972 after he “occupied” its secretariat together with the unaccepted applicants in protest. In 1978, a federal court found the dismissal illegal, but Beuys no longer accepted a professorship, striving to be as independent from the state as possible. On the wave of leftist opposition, he published a manifesto on "social sculpture" (1978), expressing in it the anarcho-utopian principle of "direct democracy", designed to replace the existing bureaucratic mechanisms with the sum of free creative wills of individual citizens and collectives. In 1983, he put forward his candidacy for the Bundestag elections (on the list of "greens"), but was defeated. Beuys died in Düsseldorf on January 23, 1986. After the death of the master, every museum of modern art sought to install one of his art objects in the most prominent place in the form of an honorary memorial. The largest and at the same time the most characteristic of these memorials is the Working Block at the Museum of Hesse in Darmstadt - a suite of rooms reproducing the atmosphere of the Beuys workshop, full of symbolic blanks - from rolls of pressed felt to petrified sausages

In his work of the late 1940s-1950s, “primitive” in style, close to rock paintings, drawings in watercolor and lead pin depicting hares, elks, sheep and other animals dominate. He was engaged in sculpture in the spirit of expressionism by V. Lembruk and Matare, performed private orders for tombstones. He experienced the deep influence of R. Steiner's anthroposophy. In the first half of the 1960s, he became one of the founders of "fluxus" or "fluxus", a specific type of performance art, the most common in Germany. A bright speaker and teacher, in his artistic actions he always addressed the audience with imperative propaganda energy, fixing his iconic image during this period (felt hat, raincoat, fishing vest). Used for art objects shockingly unusual materials such as lard, felt, felt and honey; The “fat corner” remained an archetypal, through motif, both in monumental and more intimate (Fat Chair, 1964, Hesse Museum, Darmstadt) variations. In these works, a sense of dead-end alienation sharply emerged. modern man from nature and attempts to enter it at the magical-“shamanic” level.

Capri-Batterie
1985

Animal Woman, 1949

earthquake, 1981

royal palace
1985

Filzanzug (Felt Suit), 1970

“I Like America and America Likes Me,” performance, May, 1974

The Pack (das Rudel), 1969

Wirtschaftswerte, 1980

Das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1982-83

Bathtub for a Heroine 1950, cast 1984

Four Blackboards 1972

Animal Woman 1949, cast 1984

o.t. aus Spur II (untitled from Trace II) 1977

Fahne (Flag) 1974

Evervess II 1968

boyes da vinci

Little sensations of German museum life - about Doctor Death and two exhibitions that unite Beuys with Leonardo da Vinci and Auguste Rodin

The first part of the legend about the German artist Joseph Beuys tells about the fall of a German plane into the Crimean steppes. I have heard that in fact there was no fall. And then read about the same.
Several weeks of unconsciousness, blankets, fat... Why not? In the end, he then continuously reproduced them in his works. Whether this can be considered strict evidence that Boyce's plane was shot down, I do not know.

Legends and myths
But what can be considered evidence in general ... Unless some young pathfinders find the place where Beuys's plane crashed, find the ancestors of those Tatars who got it out, smearing it with bacon and wrapping it in felt blankets (having written this, I climbed into the Internet and saw that someone actually made such an attempt, and besides, it turns out that in Ukraine there is already a society "Children of Beuys").
“Beuys inspired great sympathy with the Crimean Tatars, they told him: “Dubist nix is ​​a German, dubist is a Tatar!” In another German source, we read that shamans came out of Beuys and - whispered something in his ear ... that the second part of the legend began: "... and I saw how the fall becomes a rise."
And this second part of the legend - about the rise of Joseph Beuys - seemed to me less plausible. Although it seems that it is precisely this that is provable ... As you know, it says that upon returning to the Fatherland, Beuys became the main artist of the twentieth century. His joint exhibition with Leonardo da Vinci can probably be considered one of the numerous proofs of this thesis. The full exposition is called "Leonardo da Vinci: Joseph Beuys - Codex Leicester in the mirror of modernity."

Selective affinity
In the annex to the House of Arts, built specifically for the exhibition, there are glass shelves, each with a Codex Leicester page, the backlight turns on only when you come close to the glass.
So that the pages do not get tired of the light... When you come up, the rack flashes, and you see Leonardo's mirror handwriting, his drawings... Why did he write in mirror handwriting? For cryptographic purposes...
Zero in mind - that's all we have, plus an obsolete version of Windows - the Codex Leicester manuscript, by the way, is the property of Bill Gates, he himself came to Munich for the opening of the exhibition.
In a manuscript that was found relatively recently (in the 60s of the last century) in Madrid, Leonardo asks questions and gives answers to them, in which the foundations of fluid and gas mechanics are laid and often correct guesses are made about phenomena on Earth and the Moon. But the most fascinating thing in his "Code" is the drawings of flows, eddies, counter currents; this is all very similar to drawings in a vector analysis textbook. Only in the textbook the drawings are made on the basis of knowledge gained several centuries after Leonardo made his drawings...
Shelves with pages of the manuscript were in the left wing of the building, and the multimedia part of the exposition was located in the aforementioned extension, where Microsoft did not lose face...
But we immediately moved to the right wing, where, therefore, symmetrically to the "Code" by Leonardo, the second half of the exhibition was placed - the "Madrid Code" by Joseph Beuys - that very "mirror of modernity" in which "Leonardo da Vinci was reflected" ...

Meeting point
As long as we are not lost in this system of mirrors, we need, or at least we can, remember where we are. The House of Arts (Haus der Kunst) is one of the most important buildings of the Third Reich, then it was called the House of German Art. And for the Fuhrer, perhaps the most important - the Fuhrer was an artist, and Haus der Deutschen Kunst was the realization of his most cherished desires. He himself laid the first stone.
At the same time, a small incident occurred, which some interpreted as a bad sign. The hammer with which Hitler hit the stone broke into two parts. For a second he looked at his hand in confusion... Who knows what was in the soul of the involuntary bricklayer at that moment...
One way or another, the building was erected, and in addition to exhibitions of “new German art”, a landmark event for the nation was held - the exhibition “Degenerate Art” (Entarte Kunst), free of charge, by the way, where those who wish could see the ugliness of paintings by Paul Klee, Picasso, Ernst , Yavlensky, Franz Mark, in general, to laugh enough.
Keeping all this in mind, maybe it would not be worth making a wave here. But here, after all, there was a special case, it was not only about graphics - one was figurative, the other was abstract ... Leonardo's were not just drawings ... And my specialization at the university was fluid and gas mechanics, and drawings of flows , naturally, also aroused in me nostalgia for science, which I even betrayed with no one knows who.
So the strange feelings that crowded in my chest are not surprising when, after one “Code”, I began to look at another: at the sheets torn from a school notebook of an eternal repeater and, moreover, slovenly (many pages have oil stains) sheets, where chaotic broken pencil zigzags are most reminiscent of a game of "come on, finish drawing."
It is unlikely that Leonardo could have imagined that in five hundred years a human being would play such games with his drawings. Some of the zigzags really looked like the outlines of Leonardo's charts that I had just seen.
After the war, they wanted to blow up the House of German Art, believing that it was built from some absolute evil, unsuitable for melting down. But then they changed their minds, and a casino for American officers was opened in the House for some time, and then it again became the House of Art, only one word was removed from its name: “German”.

Role drawings
And now there are drawings either of a Luftwaffe pilot who fell to the Tatars, or a Luftwaffe pilot who fell into tartarara, who returned to Germany with good news: “Every person is an artist!”, “We are all free!” - and stuff like that. By God, one should rejoice that ausgerechnet in diesem Haus (just in this house) exactly such drawings hang ... And I rejoice - how can I not rejoice ... But only ... In a quiet whisper : Well, what does Leonardo da Vinci have to do with it?
I even thought: maybe the fact is that Leonardo drew an aeronautical apparatus four hundred years before its appearance? four hundred thousand years... Remembered how "...they kissed with the bayous bark of the chase and were caressed by the peals of the horn and the crackling of trees, hooves and claws"?
I looked at the sheet, where among the zigzags left by Boyce's pencil, one could make out the silhouette of a deer. Boyce believed that pencil drawings are the most important and perhaps meaningful part of his work. They grew later, and everything else - sculptures or just three-dimensional objects that he made, including animal bones, hooves and claws ... I saw them in various museums - I don’t know how beautiful they are ... The fact that they were only the beginning of a terrible thing, it also doesn’t prove anything ...

afterlife
H The beginning of the terrible in this sense: Beuys was replaced not so long ago by a disgusting caricature. As in a bad dream or a bad joke, a man now travels through the cities of Germany, emphasizing his resemblance with Boyce with the help of a black hat, which he likewise never takes off his head, and makes sculptural groups from the corpses of people.
Corpses play chess, do gymnastic exercises... This is plastologist Günther van Hagen, the exhibition is called "Body Worlds". The city council of Munich repeatedly banned entry into the city of this exhibition, but then the issue was raised again and again.
Until the last moment, K. did not believe that the exhibition would be allowed here: “There won’t be any in this city, that’s for sure,” she said. But in the end they were let through, van Hagen appeared on local television ... That's when I saw how firmly he was attached to the shadow of Beuys.
First, he stood at the back of the head, and then - a step to the side, a step forward, a step to the side, and he switched to foreground... And now, when you try to recall the face of Beuys, you see Gunther van Hagen instead - it works every time, absolutely clearly, and not only for me ...
Among the accusations against van Hagen was that most of these corpses were exhibited without any consent of their ... owners? relatives? That among them are the corpses of people who were executed in China. It seems that the case against him is suspended, but the fact that van Hagen uses the Beuys shadow without the consent of its owner, from my point of view, inspires suspicion in itself ... That he can do the same with someone body...
The priests of all churches attacked him now and then alternately, then there was also a collective letter from professors-pathologists of the University of Heidelberg, in which they excommunicated the plastologist from science.

Doctor Death
In an open letter published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the professors wrote that the goals of the exhibition, which van Hagen calls, are false, that in fact all this has nothing to do with educational activities. Van Hagen's calls to come to the exhibition with the whole family, to take small children there, only further fueled the anger of the professors, who roughly indicated in a letter what enlightenment in this area actually looks like.
But so far nothing has stopped the plastologist, the exhibitions continue, at all stops in the city there are luminous advertisements - the cover of Spiegel, where he poses against the backdrop of butchered corpses. Another article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, this time about Dr. Tod (ie Dr. Death) wanted to make a sinister contract with the biggest man on Earth. Most big man on earth (in this moment his height is 2.5 meters) lives in St. Petersburg and continues to grow. This is a hormonal disease, incurable, but it can be fought for some time with the help of very expensive medicines. Van Hagen undertook to pay a man something like a life annuity on the condition that he sign a contract according to which his body after death would become the property of van Hagen. The man did not sign the contract, despite all the flirtations - the plastologist flew to St. Petersburg, several times increased the promised amounts. The biggest man was simply afraid that, having signed a contract, he would die with the help of these medicines even earlier, because what is death for a Russian, then for a German ... a performance?

Boyce and Rodin
Until 27 November, the famous Frankfurt Museum Shirn hosts the exhibition "Roden: Beuys". As an intermediary between Rodin and Beuys, the curator Pamela Roth names the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
It was Rilke's monograph on Rodin, which contained many illustrations, that led Beuys to the idea of ​​starting a "timeless dialogue" with Rodin, which resulted in a series of drawings made between 1947 and 1967.
The parallels between them and Rodin's late watercolors (at their time, in 1906, which caused a whole series of scandals because of their "obscenity") have long been a commonplace for art historians, but for the first time at an exhibition in Frankfurt, the works of two artists are brought together, and this , according to the organizers, should help to see the "dialogue" in a new way.
Quote from an article in the Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung: “Even shown in this way, the parallels between the work of Rodin and Beuys can only at a stretch confirm the thesis that Rodin’s innovations - fragmentary bodies, the torso as an autonomous art form, dynamically moving surfaces of sculpture, received in Boyce's "new concept of plastic movement in space and time" some further development. These claims seem unsubstantiated and look more like interesting example artificiality of interpretations, writes Konstanz Cruwell. And then she makes a gesture of reconciliation, which, just like the doubts she cited before, applies to my recollection of another Beuys exhibition: - But be that as it may, the exhibition is certainly impressive. If only because the organizers managed to collect such an unprecedented number of unique exhibits.”

P.S. The third part of the Joseph Beuys legend says that he did not actually die. That he quietly lives among us, and, like Elvis, you can accidentally meet on the street.
P.P.S. When I wrote this text, the exhibition of Gunther van Hagen was officially banned throughout Germany, and Doctor Death moved with his theater to the USA

Meet Doctor Frankenstein

According to Professor von Hagens, he wants to instill in the people a love of anatomy

One of the Berlin exhibitions had already become scandalous before opening. They were mummified, then dismembered and put on display.
The exhibition is educational in nature. According to its organizers, it should instill in visitors a love for anatomy. However, many believe that the exhibition is a typical example of degradation.
Plastinoids
Professor Günther von Hagens, one of the organizers of the exhibition, uses technology he developed at the University of Heidelberg in the 80s.
The 57-year-old anatomist developed the plastination method. This method allows scientists to preserve human tissue by replacing the liquid with synthetic resin.
At first glance, mummies resemble anatomical models. muscles, internal organs, nervous and circulatory system - everything seemed to be frozen in time.
Some exhibits cause particular irritation of the public, especially the mummy of a young woman in whose uterus there is a fetus. Despite the fact that all future exhibits agreed to mummification during their lifetime, many believe that the creations of Professor van Hagens are very reminiscent of the experiments of the famous Nice doctor - Joseph Mengele. Others compare von Hagens to modern-day Frankenstein.
Professor von Hagens denies these allegations: "Throughout the history of the world, except for the Renaissance, the human body has always been considered something dirty and disgusting. I decided to prove the opposite. These" plastinoids "demonstrate beauty human body, Frankenstein is not about me."
ethical question
The opinions of visitors to the exhibition were divided. Someone considers the exhibition strange, someone - frightening, someone - bewitching.
Nevertheless, the exhibition aroused high interest, and negotiations have already begun to hold a similar exhibition in London and New York.
3,000 people have already signed a pact with Professor von Hagens that he will turn them into "plastinoids" after death. The church has protested against the Body Worlds, planning to hold a memorial mass in memory of the people exhibited in Berlin.
However, there is no doubt that more bitter battles about the ethical side of the issue are yet to come.

"Children of Joseph Beuys"

This was the name of an art project that began in September 2004. Then the Ukrainians Vladimir Gulich, Anatoly Fedirko, Yuri Volgin, Irina Kalenik, Gennady Kozub, Vsevolod Medvedev, and the Pole Pavel Khavinsky went from Zaporozhye to the Crimea, to the alleged crash site of the plane, 22-year-old Luftwaffe pilot Joseph Beuys.

In 1943, over the Crimea, on a narrow strip of land washed by the Black and Seas of Azov, a German aircraft was shot down. The pilot survived, he was saved by the Crimean Tatars, who saved his life with folk remedies - felt and fat.

Felt, fat, felt, wax left their mark on Beuys's life in art - these objects became attributes of his most famous installations. Some of them are presented at the Center for Contemporary Art. J. Pompidou.

Here, in a deserted place on the seashore, the artists erected a symbolic monument to Joseph Beuys - a mast with a yellow stocking to determine the wind - according to which the pilots were guided during the Second World War, and outlined with paper runway. Khavinsky made paper airplanes with written messages and launched them into the sea.

Such symbolic monuments - masts were installed as part of the continuation of the project in Kyiv on the Poskotyno mountain, and in Lvov on the Armenian street.

The whole process was recorded in video and photographic materials, which became exhibits of the project. Plus - exhibited artifacts found in the Crimea (for example, they found a wonderful flask), and installations - reflections on the famous projects of Beuys. His famous work "7000 oak trees" (planting 7000 thousand trees) was continued in the work "7000 + 1 oak tree", where the 7001st oak tree is a broom. Initiates will appreciate such quotes.

In February 2005, the action continued in Kyiv, then - in Poland, at the Museum of Modern Art in Lublin.

As part of the project "CHILDREN OF BOYS", within the walls of the Zaporozhye National Technical University, a lecture was held on such areas of contemporary art as installation and performance, and a demonstration of works, including video installations, by Pavel Khavinsky.

European art after Beuys will not be the same. This statement is the internal engine of the artist from Poland. In the past, professor at the Department of Painting at the Krakow Academy of Arts, Khavinsky continuer of the Beuys line. In the same way, Paul left the walls of the academy, literally and figuratively, for the sake of total art, art, in power, similar to religion.

One of the most famous installations was an ordinary chair, on the seat of which a prism of animal fat was placed, into which a knife was stuck obliquely.

The venerable public, who visited the exhibitions in the mid-sixties, was quite shocked by the appearance of these works. "A real German professor would not do such things," the critics were indignant.

“My work will remain incomprehensible until, instead of perceiving only color and form, the viewer begins to pay attention to the features of the material,” Boyce answered them.

And fat (wax), according to Boyce, is a symbol of the life-giving power of the human body and at the same time a symbol of the creative process: the transformation of an indefinite shapeless mass into any form.

The concept of "plasticity" Boyes refers not only to the fine arts, but also to the entire life process of a person. Plastic embodies the ability to creative improvement. Boyce's "plastic theory" is based on the fact that the artist must form his work "from the inside, like the growth of a bone in the human body."

Human life is (ideally) a continuous process of creation, and in this sense of the word, any person is a creator. With characteristic uncompromisingness, Boyce put these principles into practice. Therefore, in 1972, when he was a professor at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts, Beuys accepted into his class everyone who wanted to, and not just approved ones. admission committee students.

Pulled from here, thanks art night

At the meeting with the coyote, which was the central event of the action "I love America and America loves me", Boyce arrived in an ambulance directly from the airport and also drove back

An important area in Beuys's mythological cartography, which he built from fragments of various national cultures, mostly archaic. America was, on the one hand, the crucible of capitalism, which Beuys rejected, on the other, it was also built on an ancient tribal past. In his most famous performance, "I Love America and America Loves Me," Beuys contrasted himself with the America of consumption, referring directly to archaic and natural America, personified by the coyote (the artist shared a room with him). Sometimes, however, Boyce's work dealt with modern America - in particular, Boyce portrayed the gangster John Dillinger, who is killed by machine gun fire in the back.

Oleg Kulik
artist

“In 1974, Boyce did this performance with a coyote. He himself represented a European who came to America, which was represented by a coyote, and lived with her in the gallery of René Block. And as a result of this communication, America was tamed, began to lick from the hand, eat with Boyce, ceased to be afraid of culture. In a sense, Beuys symbolized the union of the Old and New Worlds. I set the opposite task (Kulik means his work “I bite America, and America bites me.” - Approx. ed.). I didn't just come wild man, but as a man-animal to this cultivated Europe. And despite all attempts to make friendly contact with me, I remained untamed. My idea was that the artist always works on the opposite side, he never takes sides. Beuys tamed the animal, but for me the image of a wild, untamed by civilization, not subject to human rules, was just important. In this sense, I symbolized Russia, which still remains wild and untamed for the whole world.”

Inner Mongolia

An autonomous region in northern China and the name of the first (and only until this year) Beuys exhibition in Russia. It opened in 1992 in the Russian Museum, then moved to the Pushkin Museum and became in every respect a great event for the then cultural life. In a figurative sense, "Inner Mongolia" refers to the mythological nature of geopolitical motifs in Beuys's work - his fantasies about the Crimea, about Siberia, which he had never been to, his passion for the rites of the Mongols and even some oral Basque epic.

Alexander Borovsky
department head the latest trends Russian Museum

“The exhibition “Inner Mongolia” was mainly brought graphics - nevertheless, it was Beuys' first exhibition in Russia - and therefore an absolute sensation. It was a heroic period for the Russian Museum: an exhibition could cost three kopecks and become an event. This is now: well, just think, Boyce will be brought. At the same time, the composition of the exposition was not particularly surprising - there were neither his famous installations nor objects. But then the public figured it out and realized that these drawings contained all the elements of his famous personal mythology - Inner Mongolia, and shamanism, and so on. A year or two later, we even opened an alternative exhibition, where we showed all sorts of small artifacts related to Beuys - for example, Timur Novikov cut off a piece of felt from somewhere. Boyce was an icon for everyone back then."

Fat and felt

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

Beuys was one of the first to place sets of objects in showcases, transferring non-art objects into an emphatically museum context - as, say, in the work "The Chair with Fat" (1964)

Basic elements of Beuys plastics. He explained their origin in his autobiography, which was exposed by generations of art critics. It tells the story of how, being a Luftwaffe pilot, Beuys was shot down in his plane, fell into the snow somewhere on the territory of the Soviet Crimea and was nursed by the Crimean Tatars with the help of felt and fat wraps. After Boyce used felt and fat in a lot of different ways: he melted fat, molded it and simply displayed it in shop windows - it was an ideally plastic, living material, referring both to nature, and to man, and to the recent history of Germany with concentration camp atrocities. The same with felt, which he twisted into rolls, wrapped objects in it (for example, a piano) and sewed various things from it (“Felt Suit”). Like everything in Beuys, who is not in vain considered the father of postmodernism, these materials are absolutely ambivalent and lend themselves to countless, sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations.

Alexander Povzner
artist

“It seems to me that fat and felt are almost a body. Closer to a person can not be. They are like nails, it is not even clear whether it is alive or not? They are also very concentrated. I myself touched fat and felt a lot and thought about them. I felt felt, and it turned out that it was terribly laborious - like cutting a stone. Its properties are similar to clay - anything can be made from it. One kind of movement suits it - you knead it with your hands and if you touch it a million times, it will take the desired shape. And as for fat - it is unlikely that Beuys had grease, probably it was margarine. Animal melted fat.

Hares

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

The performance "Siberian Symphony" (1963) consisted of playing a dissected piano, a board with the inscription "42 degrees Celsius" (this is the maximum temperature of the human body) and a dead hare - Beuys generally loved hares

Of all the animal images that Beuys used in his work, hares were his favorite identification - to the extent that he considered his hat (see below) to be analogous to bunny ears. In the Siberian Symphony installation, a dead hare nailed to a slate board is a counterpoint to the intersections and axes that the artist draws with chalk, grease and sticks, and which form a magical map of Eurasia. In the performance How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare, Beuys rocked the hare in his arms for three hours, and then carried it from painting to painting, touching each of them with his paw and thus making contact between culture and nature, living and non-living at the same time. He carried a hare's foot with him as a talisman, and he mixed the blood of a hare with brown paint used in drawings.

Joseph Beuys

“I wanted to be reincarnated as a natural being. I wanted to be like a hare, and just like a hare has ears, I wanted to have a hat. After all, a hare is not a hare without ears, and I began to believe that Beuys is not Beuys without a hat ”(from the book“ Joseph Beuys: The Art of Cooking ”).

"Everyone is an artist"

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

At the action "Iphigenia / Titus Andronicus" (1969), Beuys read Goethe aloud and beat the plates

Boyce's famous democratic statement, which he repeated on various occasions. He also argued that everything is art and that society, if desired, can become a perfect work. Belief in the creativity of each individual led to the fact that Beuys was removed from teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts: he let everyone into classes, which seemed unacceptable to the administration. The antagonist of Beuys, the artist Gustav Metzger, responded to the phrase “Every person is an artist” like this: “What, Himmler too?”

Arseny Zhilyaev
artist, curator

“Since childhood, I have been fascinated by Boyce’s “everyone is an artist.” The fascination persists to this day, but at the same time, the understanding came that from a liberation call for an alternative social order, this slogan has turned into an obligation. This happened due to the fact that the model of labor relations of an artist producing unique products in conditions of social insecurity was extended to all types of labor activity. If you want to be successful manager, workers or sometimes even a cleaning lady, be kind - do your job creatively. And keep in mind that as a creative person, you must be ready to be fired at any time. Refusal to participate in the capitalization of one's own image is actually equated today with disability. "Art does the job" should be the slogan of a neo-liberal labor camp. Now I'm more and more fascinated by the question: is it possible today to creatively not be an artist?

Airplane

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

Boyce in front of his plane before it was shot down

Ju-87, the aircraft in which Beuys, a Luftwaffe pilot, was shot down in the Crimea. Some authors question the fact that Beuys was shot down, some doubt that the Tatars found him. In any case, Boyce's plane has become part of his legend. And the artists Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt and Kirill Preobrazhensky made a sensational work "Boys' Airplane".

Kirill Preobrazhensky
artist

“The picture where Boyce is standing in a fascist uniform against the backdrop of his downed plane, I already knew in the early 1990s. And when in 1994 Alexey Belyaev and I were offered to make an exhibition in Regina, we decided to make a model of an airplane out of felt boots - its shape makes it easy to do. And then they decided to make a copy of the aircraft one by one. Beuys with his Eurasian artistic quasi-theory was very important to us. Our exhibition opened on the anniversary of the Battle of Moscow. What was this battle? The clash of the German army, which embodies the ordnung, which no one in Europe could resist, and Russia, which embodied chaos, nature. And when the Germans began to freeze near Moscow, they faced chaos. The plane made of felt boots was a metaphor. After all, any fabric is a structure, but felt has no structure, its hairs are not subject to any order. But this is a warm, life-giving chaos - it has the function of saving energy. Belyaev and I bought felt boots ourselves at the factory - we took out almost all the products that were there, and the next day they said on TV that this only felted shoe factory in Moscow had burned down.

Followers

Photo: courtesy of Regina Gallery Press Service

"Boyce's Plane"

Beuys, like Warhol, was not just an artist, but a powerful human factory for the production of discourse. His influence went far beyond stylistic: artists not only wanted to make art like Beuys, they wanted to be Beuys. There is a large army of fight worshipers in the world. In Russia, the peak of veneration for Beuys came in the 1990s. There are many works about Beuys himself, based on Beuys, with allusions to Beuys ("Boyce's Plane", "Boyce and the Hares", "Boyce's Brides" and so on). Many artists are trying to dethrone his paternal figure from the pedestal in such, for example, ironic works as "Ne boysa" by the World Champions group. Examples of a respectful attitude to Beuys include the Moscow Theater. Joseph Beuys.

Valery Chtak
artist

“Everything that Beuys is accused of is his golden qualities: endless lies, myths sucked out of your finger, meaningless performances into which a huge amount of meaning is pumped with the help of anthroposophy (meaningless bullshit). The most beautiful thing is that he was one of the most vicious Nazis. A person who has experienced such an experience already sees the world differently. He could no longer be just an artist who made weird pictures. It began to bubble up with some kind of nonsense, which was so delicately made that the mythology stuck to it by itself. I was once told that the mystery of the Gioconda smile outweighs everything that Boyce did. And it seems to me that a smile is complete garbage, because Beuys is such an incredible leapfrog of nonsense, one exhibition is more nonsense than another. Artists like Beuys I have never seen in my life. He influenced me more as a person even than as an artist.”

social sculpture

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

Beuys planting oak trees in Kassel

A term applied to some of Beuys' work that claims to really change society through art. Beuys's proposal to build on Berlin Wall by 5 centimeters to improve its proportions. The canonical example of social sculpture is the 7,000 oak trees planted by the artist in Kassel.

Oleg Kulik
artist

“The idea of ​​social sculpture was that the artist should participate in social life, and his participation should change this society. But it seems to me that this is a dead end - participation in social life directly. People just want to live well, drink and eat happily and be protected - but the artist has his own tasks that are the opposite of these: to constantly disturb, irritate the layman. Boyce was a conformist, like all Western people, such a good, reasonable conformist. He reminds me of a North Korean who lives in the West. Public works, communication, saving the hungry and other social utopianism. For that time it was normal to dream of the common good, but now it is clear that everyone only wants to eat bananas and watch porn. The artist should not participate in social life. Most idiots choose happiness, light and joy, but the artist chooses darkness, misery and struggle. We already know that there can be no victory. There can only be defeat. The artist demands the impossible.”

Fluxus

Beuys and members of the Fluxus movement

An international art movement in which Boyce took part early in his career (along with John Cage, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and others). Fluxus was a global phenomenon that brought together many international characters and artistic practices and striving to destroy the boundaries between life and art. However, Beuys never became a full-fledged member of Fluxus, because his work was perceived by members of the movement as "too German" for the post-national concept of culture that was promoted by the ideologists of the movement.

Andrey Kovalev
critic

“Actually, Fluxus had a fight with Boyce. Their concepts were incomparable. The concept of Maciunas (George Maciunas, chief coordinator and theorist of the movement. - Approx. ed.) was about collectivity: such a collective farm, where everyone follows the party decree. And Beuys, having invited Fluxus to his place at the Düsseldorf Academy, began to do some shamanism there. They did not like this, as he pulled the blanket over himself. Conceptually, Beuys is categorically not an artist of Fluxus. He simply used their ideas in his social actions. In addition, in his works one can hear a serious echo of fascism, German nationalism. This left-wing public was also very much frightened off.

Fascism

Photo: Copyright 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Boyce with bloody mustache and upturned hand

A former member of the Hitler Youth and a pilot of the Nazi aviation, Beuys saw himself as a healer artist, whose work is aimed at the ritual healing of post-war trauma. Officially, he is considered a democrat, eco-activist and anti-fascist, but some see a distinct fascist element in his work. The apotheosis of this ambivalence is a photograph in which Beuys has a broken nose: during the action, he was hit in the face by some right-wing student. The blood looks like a Hitler mustache, one arm is raised - reminiscent of the Nazi salute, and in the other he holds a Catholic cross.

Chaim Sokol
artist

“For some reason, I always associate Beuys with fascism, or, more precisely, with Nazism. This is a completely subjective, perhaps even paranoid feeling. It has nothing to do with his biography. It always seems to me that Beuys's art was developed in some secret Hitler's bunker. All this shamanism-occultism, proto-Germanic rhetoric, ecology, the cult of personality, finally, brings up a lot of associations and memories. Take, for example, his 7,000 oak trees and related ideas about social sculpture and ecology. How can one not recall the eternal and indestructible German nation, which was symbolized by the oak tree, the ideas of ecofascism, the collective mass planting of oak trees in honor of the Fuhrer, the oak seedlings that were awarded to the winners of the Olympics in Germany in 1936. But maybe I'm wrong. Genetic fears.

shamanism

Photo: courtesy of the MMSI press service

A special style of artistic behavior developed by Beuys throughout his entire creative biography. In the role of a shaman, Boyce performed in a performance with a dead hare, smearing his head with honey and sticking pieces of foil on it, which, as it were, indicated his chosenness and the presence of a direct connection with the transcendental spheres. In the performance with the coyote, Boyce sat for three days, covered with a felt blanket and armed with a staff.

Pavel Pepperstein
artist

“Of course, Beuys wanted to be a shaman. He was first of all a cultural shaman, he aestheticized shamanism. In the 1990s, and before, he was a myth and a role model. Many artists wanted to be shamans, and many shamans were artists. Many exhibitions were made about this, for example, "Earth Magicians" by Hubert-Martin, where real shamanic art was exhibited. But there was another side to Boyce's persona - his adventurous side. Being a real shaman, he was also a real charlatan and adventurer.”

Ksenia Peretrukhina
artist

“Warhol wore a wig because he had some kind of hair problem, eczema or something. And Boyce, I once read, had metal plates on his skull - they probably appeared after he fell on his plane: he also had a head injury. But in general, the hat is beautiful. Two main artists of the twentieth century, and one has a hat, and the other has a wig - this is no coincidence. Probably, after all, the aliens screwed something into their heads, but just carelessly.

I have been thinking for several weeks how to explain one important thing without offending anyone (because offense always prevents understanding); on the other hand, they say they carry water for the offended, but it would not hurt me to transport the sea under the very windows. This is 300 kilometers, if the nearest Baltic, but I actually want more Adriatic. And it is very dofiga to carry!

So, okay, you can be offended. I know what to do with it.

The thing is that this whole war around and inside Ukraine is not just a civilizational one, as some of my smart friends say. It's evolutionary, I'm sorry. (This phrase, if wisely, must be pronounced aloud, in the voice of the Baby Elephant from the cult cartoon about the Boa constrictor, the Monkey and 38 parrots. Because otherwise the reader can attribute pathos and arrogance to the author of the statement, and they will completely distort the meaning.)

Evolution right now ("now" is not just a Monday in some May of a conditional year, but at least the next hundreds of years), is making its next round before our eyes and with our participation.

What is its main feature? That man ceases to be a talking animal. And it becomes closer to high humanistic ideas about oneself. For real, in deeds, and not at the level of conversations.
The simplest example.

In the previous round of evolution, offending the weak was normal. It was okay to reject the alien. The distribution of gender roles and rigid urogenital self-identification were also the norm. The territorial instinct, colloquially referred to as patriotism, is the norm. Obedience, reaching the need for coercion, is simply a supernorm, without which there is nowhere. Because zoological pragmatism ordered so, obliging a healthy animal to care about the survival of the species as a whole. And who does not bake, that worthless individual, although (possibly) a good Christian. He's worse.

And here's the thing about Christianity.

Strictly speaking, genuine Christian principles - the same two thousand years ago, not yet distorted by adaptation for the shirnarmass - seem to me the first meaningful and conscious step towards a new evolutionary round. Premature, of course. But the new is always premature, the new always starts in advance, when finally no one is ready for it. Therefore, any new, or rather, a reaction to it and the process of its engraftment is "not peace, but a sword."

It would be very convenient if everything new started on time, when some critical mass of users is ready for it. But here (on this planet, this humanity) there are other methods and technologies. The new comes much in advance, is distorted to the point of complete unrecognition in the process of assimilation, and then, a lot (by human standards) of time later, it suddenly sprouts from manure, into which it seems to have long turned. And at this stage, it can no longer be stopped (that is, it is possible in certain areas, but not the whole process as a whole).

Now, as I understand it, this stage has just begun.

So. On a new round of evolution, offending the weak becomes absolutely unacceptable. Destroy those who are different too. Any, even the most annoying, minority becomes strategically useful, because it brings changes to the whole, in which the whole, having already solved the pressing problems of material survival, needs for further development. Zoological pragmatism no longer rules. On the contrary, he sucks.

But God, who is love, rules. And a new person, which is an attempt to approach the state of love. How successful any private attempt is, in fact, is unimportant. Intention matters. Vector. Pulse. Impulse.

On the one hand, we are all very lucky. In the sense that you can naturally evolve right during your lifetime. To be born a pragmatic little animal, to die a living person. This is very cool fate. And now it's not that rare. For her, even the saints are no longer recorded and rightly so. Because it's not holy. Just a new round of evolution, byvat.

On the other hand, it's certainly awful how dumb it is to live right now. Yes, and on the border of civilizations, one of which is crooked, askew, clumsily, so at times it is sickening to look, but still hobbles to a new evolutionary round. That is, it is trying to incorporate into its culture some of the basic values ​​of the new species. In practice, this often looks terribly ridiculous (because the introduction of new principles is usually carried out by people who have achieved success in the old society, selected successfully socialized representatives of the outgoing species, for whom these principles are pure theory, not internal truth). But if you understand what is really going on in these most wildly irritating European cities for many points - dear mother! That doesn't happen. Taking off my hat.

If you want to understand something about a particular culture, do not find fault with trifles. See how the weak live within it. Children, the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, any kind of "minority". Artists, by the way - not fashionable, selling well, but on average in the ward. Students, teenagers. How they treat drug addicts, how seriously ill patients are treated, how foreigners are assimilated. How dangerous it is to be (look) different, a stranger there. How much your personal safety on the street and in state institutions depends on how you are dressed - for example. And by the way, about state institutions - in what conditions are the prisoners? Is the death penalty acceptable even in exceptional cases? And so on.

Today, of course, there is not a single ideal culture (ideal society). Man is generally a rather unsuitable material for creating something ideal, we are not invented for that. And even for the sake of the triumph of a life-giving mistake. What is important is not the end result (and how can the result be the end?), but the vector of development. The vector is our everything, because life is movement. And time is given to us in sensations as a series of changes.

I will not say anything new if I note that in post-Soviet culture (and there is no need to talk about some "terrible Russians", nationality is always remembered out of ignorance, more or less common qualities of large groups of people are explained solely by the peculiarities of culture, within the framework of where they live) - so, in post-Soviet culture, offending the weak is still the norm. And it seems even something like special civil law, well, at least not constitutional: each victim is obliged to obey the aggressor, but has the right to find another victim and pass his leisure time pleasantly.

Not surprisingly, within this culture, it is life-threatening to evolve. But for some (actually many) it happens on its own. I really want such people not only to somehow survive and quietly crawl around the corners, but to live normally. I don't know how this is possible under the circumstances. This is my big pain. And the only consolation is that, in the first place, I quite often do not see the most obvious way out. And secondly, I tend to exaggerate dramatically. I can't take that away from me.

Well, as for Ukraine. What really started it all. Yes, with the fact that a certain number of conditionally "weak" people, the so-called. "ordinary citizens" made it clear that they would not allow themselves to be offended with impunity. And yet naturally they did not.

Revolutions, by the way, quite often have evolutionary causes. That is, they are started by citizens who not only do not want to live in the old way, but are evolutionarily unacceptable. They start fighting for themselves. And the collapse of revolutions is due to the fact that then citizens of the old model take matters into their own hands. Just as the most socially adapted representatives of the majority. And make hell.

There is no worse hell than the one that can organize the most ordinary present, which does not want to become the past.

In general, ordinary representatives of a culture whose basic values ​​are based on the features of the current (and now fading into the past) stage of evolution, the story of Ukraine infuriated like little. Because the success of the uprising of the traditionally weak against the traditionally strong in some way canceled out their own lives. And no one will like that. I, in fact, also do not like it at all when the temporary triumph of this very previous stage crosses out my life. In this sense, we are still really quite the same.

Therefore, with such tension, many are now following Ukraine. Rejoice in the troubles that have come there. The dead are counted on the fingers among the opponents of the new Ukrainian statehood. Well, like - you can be killed, because they themselves did not want to sit quietly, this is understandable to any fool. But you can’t defend yourself in any way, we’ll immediately write down as villains and you won’t wash off! (This is generally a favorite topic of the outgoing culture of violence: everything is considered to be exceeding self-defense, only the victim, limited to plaintive moans, preferably set to sad music, will receive an "A" for behavior.)

Therefore, any lie about Ukraine is now believed so readily - to think that some ordinary corrupt political crap was behind the successful uprising of the weak against the offenders is not only pleasant, but reassuring. They are waiting for the Ukrainian catastrophe - the worse, the better. Let them show! And let them show us that it is still possible to offend the weak. That there is no rightness above zoological pragmatism. That we are not evolutionary losers, not yesterday, we are the crown of creation, it doesn’t get better, you can not develop. Wow, what a relief!

It's time to introduce a new term "evolutionary envy". Absolutely irrational, allowing you to envy someone who is in trouble. The one who brought the trouble on himself. And precisely because he did it himself. Without asking mom and dad.

Independence and initiative are also greetings from the future. For us, they are just getting started. And by the way, they are actively strangled not only in the post-Soviet space. Because people of the old type are in power almost everywhere. Of course, they will fall off, but you have to wait.

As a result, two news for humanity are obtained. Both are good, although few will like the first.

The first news is that now on the same planet they live in principle different types homo sapiens. Evolved and, shall we say, not so much. There are far fewer of the former, and they are happy if they live in a society whose culture more or less encourages this. Whatever wild forms this encouragement sometimes takes.

The second news is this: the number of the former is gradually growing at the expense of the latter. Because with some this miraculous process takes place within the framework of one human life. And in any society. Everyone, as long as he is alive, has a pretty good chance. Just think. Fuck yourself, huh.

And the key, as always, is one: awareness. (Which can be distinguished from thinking the right thoughts by the degree of depth of the process: thinking is always on the surface, in the head, and awareness is somewhere in the center, under layers and layers of inner darkness.) The thing is that the immortal takes some part in the process of awareness part of us that does not need to evolve anywhere. Because she is God from the very beginning. Or something very similar to Him. He sits there, on a shining peak, and waits for us to ask for a hand:)

I don't want to discuss anything. Everything I needed to say has already been written. Simple human words. You don't even need to look up a dictionary. It seems to be.

P.S.
The last thing in the world I want to shepherd the nations. This record appeared only because it was spinning in my head for a very long time as a kind of loud internal dispute with all of humanity at once. And interfered with work. And this is not the case at all.

The exhibition "Joseph Beuys: A Call for an Alternative" has opened at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. As part of the Year of Germany in Russia, Moscow brought, among other things, the most famous works of Joseph Beuys, one of the most famous German artists of the 20th century.

By the way, he himself could not stand being called an "artist", and it is easy to understand why: such a definition would not only significantly narrow the scope of Beuys's activity, but also deprive his work of versatility and depth. He was a sculptor, and a musician, and a philosopher, and a politician.

Felt and more

In almost every hall, the visitor of the exhibition can see exhibits made of felt. The "crown" of felt art is a gray suit hanging separately from its felt "brothers". The audience is whispering, guessing what the author wanted to say with this creation.

Reason for love this material is simple: it was he, according to the legend spread by the artist himself, who saved the life of him, a former Luftwaffe pilot, in one of the cold war winters. When Boyce's plane was shot down over the Crimea in 1943, the Tatars saved him from death, allegedly warming the young man with mutton fat and felt.

The largest, and in the truest sense of the word, exhibits of the exhibition were the famous "Tram Stop" and "The End of the 20th Century". The latter can be described as follows: huge pieces of basalt symbolize an ecological catastrophe, self-destruction of humanity and dangerous inaction. According to Beuys, historical pessimism should teach contemporaries and descendants not only to interact with the outside world without destroying themselves, but also to heal humanity, making it not a victim of progress, but a creator.

" I love America and America loves me"

No less interesting are the video installations exhibited in Moscow. We can say that each of them opens the artist's work to the viewer from a new side. The interactive halls of the exposition are dedicated to Beuys' favorite country - the USA. The country, which absorbed much that the artist did not like, was embodied in his work in the form of a coyote. Boyce, having "befriended" a coyote named Little John, made the wild animal part of the famous New York performance "I love America, and she loves me", where a coyote tears tatters on the Boise. Art theorists saw symbolism not only in the choice of animal, but also in the figure of the author: Boyce became the personification of the Old World, and the coyote - the New.

Context

The most "noisy" hall of the Moscow exposition is called "Coyote III": video from musical accompaniment takes us to Japan, where in 1984 Joseph Beuys was invited to an exhibition. At the same time, there was Nam June Paik, a well-known American-Korean artist and video art pioneer. By chance, an unusual duet was formed, which resulted in the performance "Coyote III". Boyce made sounds reminiscent of the roar of a coyote, and Pike accompanied him on the piano: either playing variations on the theme of the Moonlight Sonata, or simply banging the lid.

Beuys in Moscow

"A Call for an Alternative" is not the first exhibition of Beuys's works in Moscow. In 1992, residents and guests of the Russian capital were already lucky enough to enjoy his work, but there was no such excitement as this time. The first significant difference between the current exhibition and the previous show is the number of exhibits. Last time in Moscow they showed only Beuys's graphics, in fact abandoning the political component of his work.

"Call for an Alternative" focuses on politics. A student of one of the Moscow universities, Maria, shares her impressions of the exhibition: art, I saw in the works of Beuys unobtrusive, dressed in art forms opinion, from politics to religion.

Joseph Beuys

“Joseph Beuys is perhaps the most influential German artist after the Second World War, and his influence goes beyond the borders of Germany; we can say that his ideas, works, actions, constructions dominated the cultural scene, writes H. Stachelhaus. - It was a large, charming figure, his manner of speaking, proclaiming, playing a role made an almost narcotic impression on many contemporaries. His idea of ​​an "expanded understanding of art", which culminated in the so-called "social plasticity", caused confusion among many. For them, he best case, there was a shaman, at worst - a guru and a charlatan ...

… The more you study Beuys, the more you discover new aspects in his activity, and this allows you to delve deeper into and analyze it. Even during the life of Beuys there was no shortage of studies of his work, but now it remains only to master it in all its volume and almost boundless diversity. This is an extremely difficult job, every now and then baffling. Of course, the viewer who decides to cautiously enter the often dark and confusing path leading to Beuys needs to stock up on considerable patience, sensitivity and tolerance. "It's good to describe what you see," Beuys once said. Thus, you join in what the artist has in mind. It's also good to guess things. Then something moves. Only as a last resort should one resort to such a means as interpretation. Indeed, much of what Beuys did defies rational understanding. All the more important is intuition for him - he calls it the highest form of "ration". It is mainly about creating "anti-images" - images of a mysterious, powerful inner world.

Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld on May 12, 1921. As a schoolboy, Josef was interested in the natural sciences. After leaving school, he enters the preparatory department of the Faculty of Medicine, intending to become a pediatrician.

Josef early becomes interested in serious literature. He reads Goethe, Hölderlin, Novalis, Hamsun. Of the artists, he singles out Edvard Munch, and of the composers, Eric Satier, Richard Strauss and Wagner attracted his attention. The philosophical works of Soren Kierkegaard, Maurice Maeterlinck, Paracelsus, Leonardo had a great influence on the choice of a creative path. Beginning in 1941, he became seriously interested in anthroposophical philosophy, which every year more and more finds itself at the center of his work.

However, the meeting with the work of Wilhelm Lembruck turned out to be decisive for Beuys. Beuys discovered reproductions of Lembroek's sculptures in a catalog that he managed to save during another book burning organized by the Nazis in 1938 in the courtyard of the Cleves Gymnasium.

It was Lembrook's sculptures that led him to the idea: “Sculpture ... You can do something with sculpture. Everything is a sculpture, this image seemed to shout to me. And I saw a torch in this image, I saw a flame, and I heard: save this flame!” It was under the influence of Lembrook that he began to engage in plasticity. Later, when asked if any other sculptor could determine his decision, Beuys invariably answered: “No, because the extraordinary work of Wilhelm Lembruck touches the very nerve of the concept of plasticity.”

Beuys meant that Lembruck expressed something deeply internal in his sculptures. His sculptures, in fact, cannot be perceived visually:

“It can only be perceived by intuition, when completely different senses open their gates to a person, and this is primarily audible, felt, desired, in other words, categories are found in sculpture that have never existed in it before.”

The Second World War. Beuys receives a specialty as a radio operator in Poznań and at the same time attends lectures on the natural sciences at the university there.

In 1943, his dive bomber is shot down over the Crimea. The pilot died, and Boyce, having jumped out of the car with a parachute, lost consciousness. He was rescued by the Tatars who roamed there. They carried him into their tent, where they fought for his life for eight days. Tatars lubricated severe wounds with animal fat, and then wrapped in felt to keep them warm. A German search party came to the rescue and took him to a military hospital. Boyce later received several more severe wounds. After treatment, he again went to the front. Boyce ended the war in Holland.

The experience was reflected later in the work of Beuys: fat and felt become the main materials of his plastic art. The felt hat that Boyce always wears is also the result of his fall in the Crimea. After severe damage to the skull - his hair was burned to the very roots, and the scalp became extremely sensitive - the sculptor was forced to constantly cover his head. At first he wore a woolen cap, and then moves on to a felt hat from the London firm Stetson.

If Lembruck turned out to be Beuys's ideological teacher, then Ewald Matare from the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts became his real teacher. The novice master learned a lot from Matare. For example, the ability to convey the most essential in the characteristic forms of animals.

In the late forties and early fifties, Beuys was looking for the possibilities of other plastics. Almost simultaneously in 1952, he creates a deeply sincere and at the same time emphatically conditional “Pieta” in the form of a punched relief and “The Queen of the Bees”, with its extremely new form of plastic expressiveness. At the same time, the first sculpture from fat appears, and then the cross appears, expressing a new artistic experience in the work of Beuys. At the same time, Beuys is primarily interested in the symbolism of the cross, and he understands the cross as a sign of an ideological clash between Christianity and materialism.

In the fifties and sixties, the work of Beuys remained known only to a circle of associates. But the situation is rapidly changing thanks to the growing interest of the media and the special talent of Beuys himself to communicate with journalists in a friendly way. It was impossible not to notice the unusualness of this artist, his rigorism and radicalism, and simply his uniqueness. Beuys became a cultural-political and socio-political factor in the Federal Republic of Germany, and his influence spread throughout the world.

Undoubtedly, this influence was also promoted by the Fluxus movement, in which Beuys takes an active part. This movement sought to break down the boundaries between art and life, discard the traditional understanding of art, and establish a new spiritual unity between artists and the public.

But, having become a professor at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts in 1961, Beuys gradually loses touch with Fluxus. And this is natural - a man like him had to make his way alone, because he was always more defiant than others. With his "social plasticity", which embodied "an expanded understanding of art," Beuys raised fine art to a new level of effectiveness. He was led to "social plasticity" by work on the image of a person.

In 1965, in the Dusseldorf gallery Shmela Beuys arranged an unusual action called:

"How pictures are explained to a dead hare." Here is how H. Stachelhaus describes this event: “The viewer could observe this only through the window. Boyce was sitting in the gallery on a chair, dousing his head with honey and sticking real gold foil on it. In his hands he held a dead hare. After some time, he got up, walked with a hare in his hands through a small gallery room, brought him close to the paintings that hung on the wall. It was like he was talking to a dead rabbit. Then he carried the animal over the withered Christmas tree lying in the middle of the gallery, again sat down with the dead hare in his hands on a chair and began to knock his foot with an iron plate on the sole on the floor. The whole action with the dead hare was filled with indescribable tenderness and great concentration.

Two iconographically important starting points in the work of the sculptor are honey and a hare. In his creative credo they play the same role as felt, fat, energy. Honey for him is associated with thinking. If bees produce honey, then man must produce ideas. Boyce juxtaposes both abilities in order, in his words, to "resurrect the deadness of thought."

Similar thoughts are expressed by the master in such works as “The Queen of Bees”, “From the Life of Bees”, “Bee Bed”.

In "A Honey Pump in Working Order", presented at the "Documenta 6" exhibition in Kassel (1977), Beuys achieves an unusual transformation of this theme. Thanks to electric motors, honey moved through a system of plexiglass hoses stretched from the basement to the roof of the Fridericianum museum. As conceived by the artist, this meant a symbol of the circulation of life, flowing energy.

“This plastic process, played out by bees, Beuys transferred to his artistic philosophy,” Stachelhaus writes. - Accordingly, plastic for him is organically formed from the inside. Stone, on the contrary, is identical to sculpture, that is, to sculpture. Plastic for him is a bone formed by the passage of fluid and hardened. Everything that later solidifies in the human organism, as Boyce explains, originally proceeds from the liquid process and can be traced back to it. Hence his slogan: "Embryology" - which means the gradual hardening of what was formed on the basis of the universal evolutionary principle of movement.

As for the significance of the hare in Beuys' work, it is also emphasized in a whole series of works and actions. There is, for example, "The Grave of a Hare" and the inclusion of a dead hare in various productions, such as "Chief" (1964), "Eurasia" (1966). From the molten similarity of the crown of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Boyce at the exhibition "Document 7" molded a hare. Beuys called himself a hare. For him, this animal is marked by a strong attitude towards the female sex, towards childbirth. It is important for him that the hare loves to burrow into the ground - he is to a large extent embodied in this earth, which a person can radically realize only with his thought, in contact with matter.

Beuys himself was a sculpture that was exhibited as an example - so, already his birth was the first exhibition of plastics by Joseph Beuys; not without reason, in the chronicle of life and work compiled by him, it is written: "1921, Kleve - an exhibition of a wound tied with a tourniquet - a cut umbilical cord."

Thus, it is impossible not to see the anthroposophical significance of "social plasticity". Beuys himself liked to repeat: everything he did and said served this purpose. Therefore, the sculptor enters into discussions about the economy, law, capital, democracy. He also participates in the Green Movement, the Organization for Direct Democracy by Popular Voting, and the Free International University. He created the latter in 1971 as the "Central Authority for the Expanded Understanding of Art". And of course, there is a separate process that Beuys led in many instances in 1972 regarding his dismissal from the post of professor State Academy arts in Düsseldorf. The artist won. But Beuys, along with the rejected applicants for training, occupied the secretariat of the academy, demanding the abolition of the “Nunnerus clausus” rule, after which the Minister of Science dismissed him ahead of schedule for violating the established procedure.

Boyce's incredible activity throughout his life seems to be a miracle. He had sore legs, his spleen and one kidney were removed, and his lungs were affected. In 1975, the artist suffered a severe heart attack. In addition, in recent years he was tormented by a rare disease of the lung tissue. "The king is sitting in a wound," he once put it. Boyce was convinced that there was a connection between suffering and creativity that suffering gives a certain spiritual height.

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GOEBBELS, Joseph (1897–1945), Nazi German Propaganda Minister 85 We can do without oil, but for all our love of the world, we cannot do without weapons. They don't shoot with oil, they shoot with cannons. Speech in Berlin, 17 Jan. 1936 (Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan. 18)? Knowles, p. 342 11 Oct.

From book The World History in sayings and quotes author Dushenko Konstantin Vasilievich

MOHR, Josef (Mohr, Josef, 1792–1848), Austrian Catholic priest and organist 806 Silent Night, Holy Night. // Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht. Name and a line of a Christmas song, words by More (1816), music. Franz Gruber

From the author's book

GOEBBELS, Joseph (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany20 We can do without oil, but, with all our love for the world, we cannot do without weapons. They do not shoot with oil, they shoot from cannons. Speech in Berlin 17 Jan. 1936 (Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan. 18)? Knowles, p. 34211 Oct. 1936

From the author's book

Pilsudski, Josef (Pilsudski, Josef, 1867-1935), in 1919-1922 head ("Chief") of the Polish state, in 1926 carried out an authoritarian coup d'état51aI got off the red tram at the Nezavisimost stop. So Pilsudski said to the Polish