“To be a teacher is my greatest work of art”
Joseph
Beuys and his students at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen
Epigones?
Thanks, but no thanks! As a professor at the Dusseldorf Art Academy,
Joseph Beuys left an indelible mark on an entire generation of artists.
But he always encouraged his students to find their own way. Now, the
exhibition "To be a teacher is my greatest work of art" presents 150 works
by Beuys and his most notable students from the Deutsche Bank Collection. Achim
Drucks introduces the show at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen.
Joseph
Beuys, Für Blinky, n.d, © VG Bild – Kunst, Bonn 2008.,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Joseph
Beuys humbly washes his students’ feet as atonal music plays in the
studio; a young man dribbles mealworms over himself while students talk
about their works. Hans Emmerling’s film Joseph Beuys and His Class not
only documents the teachings and actions at the Dusseldorf
Art Academy; the 1971 production also carries us back to an era of
upheaval that was greatly influenced by Beuys’ artistic and political
actions. "Govern yourselves" is printed on the flyer he and Johannes
Stüttgen are handing out in front of a Kaufhof department store.
The professor in his trademark hat and his student with his face painted
in chalky white animatedly discuss political change with passers-by. After
all, Dare more democracy" is the motto of the socialist-liberal democratic
coalition led by Willy
Brandt, who beginning in 1969 sets about reforming the Federal
Republic of Germany. In the wave of the students’ movement and the APO,
the "extra-parliamentary opposition," art leaves his ivory tower and
arrives in the shopping district.
Peter
Angermann,
untitled (Joseph
Beuys), from "Tapeten", 1983,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
This fascinating
documentary can be seen in the exhibition To
be a teacher is my greatest work of art at the Kunstmuseum
Ahlen, which includes 150 works on paper from the Deutsche
Bank Collection. Curator Friedhelm
Hütte, Director of Deutsche Bank Art, juxtaposes the show’s many
Beuys works with works by his most important students. Drawings,
photographs, and prints by Walter
Dahn, Felix Droese, Jörg
Immendorff, Anselm
Kiefer, Imi
Knoebel, Blinky
Palermo, and Katharina
Sieverding testify to Beuys’ personal and artistic influence as well
as to the mutual influences arising out of the intense dialogue between
the professor and his students.
Imi
Knoebel, untitled, 1968/72, © VG Bild – Kunst, Bonn 2008,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Sometimes a newspaper report was enough to prompt aspiring
artists to come to Dusseldorf. For instance Beuys got hit in one action,
and then, with a bloodied nose, he held out a crucifix to the audience.
The photograph of this artist messiah who could even spontaneously
incorporate physical attacks into his actions was printed in many
newspapers. "In spite of his age, he was open, rebellious, and questioned
things that others of his generation swallowed without a word. That was
why the newspaper article impressed us so much. We needed someone who was
searching, just like we were. We were looking for extremes," as Imi
Knoebel explained in an interview. In 1965, Knoebel and his friend Rainer
(Imi) Giese dropped out of the Werkkunstschule
in Darmstadt to go to Dusseldorf. For them, Beuys’ person was far more
important than his actual work.
Blinky
Palermo, untitled, from "Wandzeichnungen", 1968, © VG Bild – Kunst, Bonn
2008,
Deutsche Bank Collection
Although
the work they were doing was heavily influenced by Russian
Constructivism and diametrically opposed to his own, Beuys admitted
the two into his class. "Beuys couldn’t make much of our stuff. But he
could allow people to do completely different things." He even made one of
his three classrooms available to them, where Blinky Palermo was initially
still working. A master student of Beuys’, his series of designs for wall
drawings, simple straight lines in geometric arrangements, are also on
show in Ahlen. The two Imis also investigated abstraction in their
photographic series; in one of these, Knoebel recorded his projections,
reduced forms of light that he shone onto building facades at night. In
Giese’s work, luminous digits merge to form lines.
Joseph
Beuys, Mädchen (Rücken), 1957, © VG Bild – Kunst, Bonn 2008,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
There were worlds separating
the cool formal experiments of these three minimalists and Beuys’
biomorphic pictorial vocabulary, but this didn’t present a problem to the
professor. On the contrary: it was Beuys’ self-proclaimed goal to help his
students find their own individual way. "I never bothered to force
anything on people in terms of what my idea of art was or is. Instead,
I’ve always looked for the possibilities that each individual has," he
explained in 1984. When the professor for sculpture began teaching in
1961, the emphasis was still on conventional approaches like drawing from
the model and sculpting from wood, clay, and plaster. In the mid-sixties,
parallel to the crystallization of his "plastic
theory," he gradually supplanted the traditional forms of teaching
with discourse and discussion. In group sessions, students talked about
artistic and social issues. In his own work, a broadening of the idea of
what art could be led Beuys to work with new materials, such as fat, felt,
and found objects and to develop his concept of the "social
sculpture," which he implemented in his interaction with his students.
The point was not to produce material works of art, but to work together
to create a social utopia in which each person would be free to develop
his or her own creativity.
Joseph
Beuys, Filzplastik-Bronzeplastik, 1964, © VG Bild – Kunst, Bonn 2008,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Art’s meaning for society as
Beuys stressed it again and again is also reflected in the birth of the
Deutsche Bank Collection in the late 1970s. Beuys’ famous formula "Art =
Capital" also applies here, but not in the sense that the art is regarded
as a decorative investment for the upper floors of the board. As the motto
"Art at the Workplace" expresses, the collection’s founders were committed
to enabling people to have a direct encounter with contemporary positions
outside the established institutions, such as museums or galleries. Art is
cultural capital that should benefit all staff members, visitors, and the
public. Beuys’ great significance for the collection is also manifested in
the top floor of one of the twin towers in Frankfurt, which is dedicated
to the artist. The main focus of interest is his drawings, a medium of key
importance both for Beuys and for the collection. Beuys regarded drawing
as "an extension of thought" that directly reflects the creative process.
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