Joseph Beuys
The visual language of his drawing describe the delicate and fragile nature
of society. By only giving us enough to identify and object Beuys allows us to
project our own picture into the image. I am highly interested in this way of
working, as I develop my practise in emotional reactions to drawing
strategies. The occasional bold use of
colour suggests a certain importance as to the figures, vermilion, a colour
rich in connotations of violence and rebirth.
"Thinking Is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys reveals how Beuys’s identity not only as an artist, but as a teacher, performer, political activist, and social reformer, can be traced through his drawings. Beuys’s drawings also provide a crucial key to the artist’s theory of “social sculpture,” a phrase which describes both his own mission and his conception of society and the world as a vast work of art existing in a process of constant transformation. “Beuys designated all of life as a creative activity,” Bernice Rose writes in her catalogue essay, “with humanity as its central subject.... Beuys is best known for his sculpture, with its many unorthodox mediums and materials, and for the “Actions” (performances) which made him one of the most visible figures in the art world. But it was in his drawings (generally agreed to exceed 10,000 sheets) that he diagrammed his ideas and first revealed his creative identity. Beuys often likened his drawings as a whole to an energy bank, a vital source of ideas. In her catalogue essay, Ann Temkin writes, “Beuys has been described by those who knew him as constantly drawing; he drew while travelling, while watching TV, while in private discussion, while in performance. Beuys’s attitude toward drawings implied it to be as intrinsic to him as breathing.”
Thinking Is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys includes some 180 examples in a variety of mediums, from traditional ones such as pencil, watercolour, oil, and collage to less conventional materials such as hare’s blood, beeswax, chalk on blackboard, and chocolate. The works show how, over the course of five decades, Beuys’s drawings moved from the sketchbook page to the blackboard, from private to public. They also reveal the rich variety of sources that inform all of Beuys’s work, including alchemy, Christian tradition, mythology, literature, anthropology, and science.In the early 1960's, Beuys allied himself with the FLUXUS movement, where he first emerged in his public role as performer. He became one of the most prominent figures in that movement’s festivals and events, and many of his drawings from this period serve as scores or plans for “Actions.” Beuys’s increasingly public concerns, and the transformation from performer into political activist and social reformer, may be traced through the drawings of the late 1960's and 1970's, which show his expanding concept of art and the role of drawing within it. His concern with social and intellectual reform led him into politics in the 1970's, but also into a new artistic territory of drawings both diagrammatic and emblematic which he used to illustrate his thought.
Reflection:
Storytelling,
ritual and myth have always played a significance in the life of Joseph Beuys.
Throughout his career as an artist, he never stopped using narratives whether
fictional or not, as a tool to open the eyes of the viewer and engage them into
seeing his work in a different light.
Claiming “A powerful myth contains
more truth then everyday reality” he saw myth as a realm within a realm where
anything could have truth if the story was potent enough. The use of myth
within society harks back to the beginning of time, where problems were dealt
with and cures were made, purely by whatever was close to hand at the time.
This ancient knowledge as it was
known is largely made from a mixture of bricolage and homeopathy, and developed
through a process of trial and error by cunning folk.
sources:
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