Beuys Page #2

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I just thought he was someone who was

surrounded and courted by people and...

And then he had this incredible,

instinctive self-assurance

and this penetrating gaze.

And...

And a really sharp mind.

You need both, otherwise there's no point.

You're just a dreamer.

But he wasn't.

He was and he wasn't at the same time.

I don't know how anyone can stand that.

He was totally consistent

in his words and actions.

FOR THE DOCUMENTA

7,000 OAKS

You're serious?

If I say I'm going to plant 7,000 oaks,

then I'm going to plant 7,000 oaks.

I think the project

will take at least three years.

Thank you, Mr. Beuys.

How would you help someone

who's dumbfounded by your work

to understand it better?

I would show him the two utensils,

a spoon and a fork

and invite him to eat the object.

During the 100 days of the documenta,

you're spending 10 hours a day

here in your office.

You speak with everyone,

you answer every question...

At the heart of the documenta,

several hectoliters of bee honey

pulsate through

an extensive system of veins.

Title." "The Honey Pump in the Workplace."

The 7,000 trees in Kassel

each have a rock,

so it's a tree monument.

Every tree has a kind of opposite pole.

The tree keeps growing taller,

the rock stays as it is.

I wanted to juxtapose these two things.

So that over the course of time...

the proportions change constantly.

AN IDEA IS TAKING ROO SET YOUR ROCK ROLLING

JOSEPH BEUYS:
7,000 OAKS

I'd like to talk a little more about

another one of your influences,

your biography, your life.

If I understand correctly,

it's more than just

a personal affair for you.

What does your personal story

have to do with your art?

Is your an as autobiographical

as is sometimes claimed?

You're originally from Kleve.

You're the son of a civil servant

who went on to own

a fertilizer business, I believe.

So you weren't really predestined

to be an artist,

especially not with your

family background.

That's right, I wasn't.

My parents would've preferred me

to work in the margarine factory in Kleve.

Why did they want you

to work in the margarine factory?

Because it was the easiest way

to get a good job,

because it was on a par

with being a civil servant.

My parents wanted me to go there

because they thought,

"Whatever will become of him?"

But he did say he felt like a stranger

in his parents' house.

There was something missing there.

He felt no warmth there,

not even toward his mother.

Not really...

Theirs was a purely

pragmatic relationship...

That's how I imagine it, knowing him.

But what he felt deep down,

that was something else.

He said that his parents

rather neglected him,

that they left him to his own devices.

But instead of being sad about it,

he was proud of it.

It says a lot about him.

That's normally seen as a flaw,

but for him it was a source of strength,

being left alone, being free,

going off into the fields.

Hasn't your appearance

also become something of a cliche?

- Your famous hat, for example?

- Yes.

Does the hat

have a protective function,

or is it simply a trademark?

It also has a protective function.

So you protect your head with it.

Yes, I protect my head.

You were seriously wounded

several times during the war.

- And you once...

- Correct.

-...crashed with your plane, in '43.

- Yes.

And you said,

"It's been drafty up there ever since.

- Actually, I've got a screw loose."

- Correct.

I also said that I was shot into shape.

Do you remember the crash,

or did it happen so quickly that...?

I remember the plane going down.

I said, "Let's get out, let's jump."

- So there were other people in the plane?

- Yes, one other man.

- And he died?

- There was nothing left of him.

Apart from a few pieces of bone,

everything was...

Yes, well...

I remember hearing

the voices of the Tatars.

I remember them finding me

and standing around me.

But then I lost consciousness.

All the things I remember happened

when I was only partly conscious,

because I didn't regain consciousness

for about 12 days.

When I came to,

I was in a German hospital in the Crimea.

ACADEMY O F ARTS

Beuys was a very slim,

very skinny young man...

with a face that you never forgot.

It was somewhat deform ed

as a result of one of the crashes.

He'd suffered a broken nose

as well as injuries to his skull.

And...

But he was a man with tremendous charisma,

who radiated a tremendous warmth.

KLEVE, FEBRUARY 28,1957

"After not having visited Beuys

for a long time, I called on him today.

He was going through another phase

of neither washing

nor putting on any clothes.

He's abandoning himself more and more,

as an artist too.

How often he weeps,

says he's going to leave,

go somewhere, forever."

It probably had something to do

with the fact that he was undernourished.

And also with his total lack of success.

In any event,

that was the...

That was the time

when he sank into the quagmire

of his own inner misery.

"The chief resident spoke

about the examination in Essen.

As I understood it,

he'd diagnosed Beuys as being incurable."

He stayed there all summer.

He stayed in my room,

and when he was...

When he was depressed,

he hardly responded.

And during the worst periods,

he hardly ever left his room,

not even for a meal.

And on his better days...

he'd spend the whole day outside with us

from morning till evening,

in the meadows or fields.

And then we told him he should

do something again, at all costs.

He said, "I'm finished with art.

I don't want anything more to do with it."

I said, "You can't carry on like this."

And then my mother went up to his room

and knocked on the door, "Mr. Beuys?"

But Mr. Beuys didn't want

to come out, and she said,

"I want to talk to you, open the door,"

which he did.

And then she appealed to his conscience.

And she told him that his gift

was also an obligation, a duty

toward the spirit

that had given him that gift.

After you graduated from art school,

you withdrew to the countryside

for ten years.

Yes, I didn't feel the need to be pan

of the contemporary an scene.

When did you decide

to start doing performance an?

I think it developed quite organically

from my aim to expand

the boundaries of art.

Beuys had to create a basis for himself

in order to overcome this crisis.

He needed a pedestal to stand on,

rather like the Archimedean point,

"Give me a place to stand

and I'll move the Earth."

But it was also a spiritual basis...

his theory of "social sculpture."

How he did that, it's something I...

"How is a figure, a form created?"

"Where does the form come from?

What is form?"

Yes, that's interesting.

Certainly, when I began...

And I'm referring to my drawings again...

I was actually... How can I put it?

I was feeling my way around.

I was groping about.

Almost as if I was in the dark,

you might say.

I had to touch something...

and often had to lay it down...

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