10.09.2009
“To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.” These are the words of the prominent artist Joseph Beuys, one of the most important representatives of German art after World War II. “The rest is waste product, a demonstration.”
Maybe this was the reason he chose to express his ideas with different materials, without referring to an excess use of materials. And his perception of teaching definitely made him a significant force in conveying different ideas and styles to his students. While he contributed to the formation of a new generation in art to a big extent, many of his students maintain entirely different methods and conceptions of art than Beuys, despite the fact that they were influenced by him.
These days, the spirit of Beuys, who taught over 300 students at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art from 1961 until 1971, and his students is being recalled in an exhibition titled “Joseph Beuys and His Students — Works from the Deutsche Bank Collection.” Organized within the framework of the 11th International İstanbul Biennial and also on the occasion of the 100th year of Deutsche Bank’s presence in Turkey, the exhibition opened at Sabancı University’s Sakıp Sabancı Museum yesterday and will run through Nov. 1.
Curated by Frieldhelm Hütte, global head of art at Deutsche Bank, and art critic Ahu Antmen, the exhibition is the first to combine works on paper by Beuys with drawings, photographs and prints by his prominent students: Peter Angermann, Lothar Baumgarten, Walter Dahn, Felix Droese, Imi Giese, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Imi Knoebel, Inge Mahn, Ulrich Meister, Meuser, Blinky Palermo, Katharina Sieverding and Norbert Tadeusz.
“The exhibition of works by Joseph Beuys and those of his students together presents a view of how the artist has influenced the medium of art since the 1960s,” said Nazan Ölçer, director of Sakıp Sabancı Museum, during a press conference organized before the launch of the exhibition. Ölçer also pointed out Beuys’ controversial personality: “Beuys was a German, and Germany is a country which witnessed an overall destruction, witnessed how wars can split societies and destroy cities. At such a young age at that time, Beuys was one of the first witnesses of this, and thus he had a political position as a reaction to this destruction.” Explaining their reasons for choosing Beuys as the theme of the exhibition, Ölçer said, “We decided to portray out his vivid personality, which appeared as a prophet of the 21st century, warning us against dangers awaiting, and to make him the hero of this exhibition.”
Born into a world of destruction
Born in 1921 in Krefeld, a city in northwestern Germany near the Dutch border, Beuys was in fact born into a world getting fiercer and fiercer. “Beuys is an artist with many different aspects,” said Antmen during the press conference. “He was an artist, an activist, an educator.” While he was introduced to the sculptures of Wilhelm Lehmbruck in his early years, he decided to study medicine after he finished his studies at Hindenburg Secondary School in 1940. However, his life took a more adventurous turn after World War II broke out. His studies were interrupted when he had to join the army, where he served as a radio operator and a fighter pilot. In 1943, Beuys’ plane crashed in Crimea, where he was found by a German search commando and brought to a military hospital, where he recovered. Beuys would refer to this experience imaginatively, saying that he was cared for by Tatars who wrapped him with fat and felt, which later became key materials for his artwork. However, the story didn’t end at this point. At the end of the war, he was held in a British prisoner-of-war camp for several months before returning to Kleve in 1946.
‘Think or leave!’
After developing the plastic theory in the mid-1950s, he was appointed to the chair of monumental sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1961. “Beuys had a conception of education which permeated every moment of his life,” said Antmen. “He had an ideal of transforming society.” And what he told students in his class was quite influential in this sense: “Think or leave!” Beuys did have an impact on the new generation: a student of Beuys’ by the name of Jörg Immendorff took this warning to heart by developing a style that posited art as a catalyst of social change. Beuys also expressed his ideas with his own words too: “Art is a genuinely human medium for revolutionary change in the sense of completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one.”
“During his lifetime, he made more than 10,000 works on paper,” said Antmen. “The works on paper were a way of thinking for Beuys; it was a kind of meditation for him.”
There’s no doubt that the activist aspect of Beuys cannot be ignored; however, it is his educational aspect that is highlighted in the exhibition. “All his students had very different inclinations but all of them have a political sensibility and have unique ideas about life. And this exhibition brings all these different trends together,” Antmen stressed.
AHSEN UTKU
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