Joseph Beuys
Deborah Schultz
Tate Modern London February 4 to May 2 2005
How does the work of Joseph Beuys look nearly 20 yearsafter his death? Does it look dated or still relevant? This is thefirst major show of Beuys's work in the UK and is largely devoted to three-dimensional works, mainly from the 70s and 80s. A decision was made neither to show early works nor to include any drawings or paintings, partly because The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1999 and partly to give coherence to the current show which, as a result, feels open and spacious. Although in the mid 80s Beuys's work seemed to be everywhere, there have been only three major exhibitions of hiswork since his death: Berlin, 1988; Dusseldorf, 1992; Zurich, Madrid and Paris, 1993-1994. The show at Tate Modern, organised by The Menil Collection, Houston in collaboration with Tate Modern, is billed as the 'most important exhibition of the artist's work in Europe for a decade'.
So, why show Beuys's work now, in the UK? How might a contemporary Tate audience understand his work? Notably, apart from in the first room, there are no information panels. Instead explanatory texts are compiled into a nice felt-coloured booklet with titles and pages in Beuys's characteristic rust colour. On show are large works, installations and vitrines; also displayed are blackboards and documentation recorded in photographs and on film of the action I like America and America likes me, 1974, and of discussions at the Tate Gallery in 1972 on fundamental issues concerning democracy, freedom and humanity at which Beuys's contemporaries, Gustav Metzger and Richard Hamilton, posed questions. The monitors on which these recordings are shown are small, which has the effect of reminding the viewer that these events took place in the past. A distance is thus created between Beuys the person, and the present show which focuses upon the works.
A number of works are shown that are rarely lent, most notably The Pack, 1969. In this striking piece, the back of an aged VW van is open and 24 sledges, each fitted with a flashlight, a lump of fat and a small roll of felt, pile out and across the floor of the room. I Want to See My Mountains, 1950/71, and Show Your Wound, 1974-75, are intimate installations that work well in small rooms. With felt flooring in the latter, the visitor feels the softness of this warm material.
Sixteen vitrines form an impressive heart to the show, located at its centre with each cabinet a mini-show in itself. The contents are varied, suggestive and carefully arranged. Naturally, they look like relics and many of them remain after actions and events – a dried rose; a plastic tube containing hare's blood; a box of FIU red wine. Others are more like studio pieces that Beuys was trying out, rich with potential ideas.
Each vitrine, arranged by Beuys, forms an autonomous unit. In contrast, some pieces depend upon the context in which they are shown rather than having a fixed formal arrangement. After its initial display at the Venice Biennale, Beuys decided that Tram Stop, 1976, should be exhibited on the floor as a series of isolated elements; the stones of The End of the Twentieth Century, 1983-85, are here strewn across the room and the visitor can walk between them. The show ends with Economic Values, 1980, in which paintings from the host institution are displayed on the walls around metal shelves stacked with packets of foodstuffs from the former GDR and a large block of plaster with an increasingly rancid lump of fat. The bourgeois connotations of the gold-framed paintings contrast with the poverty of the decaying foodstuffs. The paintings selected at Tate Modern are from Sir Henry Tate's founding donation in 1894.
There is a tendency to look for symbolic meaning in everything Beuys did; however, in this show, the strongest overall impression is of the materials of Beuys's works: warm, organic, used, transfigured, both direct and enigmatic. One is reminded of the qualities of Arte Povera and the subtle beauty of Kurt Schwitters's collages. Unsurprisingly, fat and felt are prevalent throughout the exhibition. Where are we now with the origins of these materials for Beuys? A precise event probably did not occur during the Second World War, in which Beuys's JU 87 crashed in the Crimea and nomadic Tartars rubbed fat on his body and wrapped him in felt to warm and heal him. However, these materials which form the basis for much of his practice can be understood more broadly: a material that can repeatedly be melted into liquid and that solidifies when cold, fat is in a continual state of potential change; felt is warm, soft, comforting; copper is cold, shiny and conducts electricity and energy. In contrast with the cool, knowing detachment of much contemporary art, this show communicates warm human interaction and openness. Showing Beuys's work now reminds viewers of issues and approaches that were central to art not so long ago. While the artist is noticeably absent, many of these works resonate on an intuitive as well as a material level.
This review was originally published in April 2005 / No 285, p21-22.
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