Beuys 2021 – Programme [subject of change]
Aachen
Beuys, Fluxus and the Impact The Festival of New Art in Aachen Symposium Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst und Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte der RWTH Aachen 11 to 12 June 2021— [curated by Myriam Kroll and Annette Lagler]
The name Joseph Beuys is indelibly associated with an incident at the Festival of New Art on 20 July 1964 in the main lecture hall – the Audimax – of the RWTH technical university in Aachen. A performance by Beuys took a dramatic turn when an agitated student landed a punch on his nose, drawing blood, and the event was abruptly called to a halt. Photographs taken that evening have become part of our collective memory, even if few people nowadays are fully aware of the circumstances. The symposium to be held in Aachen during »beuys 2021« will focus on the relationship between Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement in the wake of that festival in Aachen. Participants will critically examine that situation over fifty years ago in light of its importance to art, politics and society today, with particular reference to works by contemporary artists. Presented in cooperation with the Chair of Art History, this two-day symposium will welcome numerous expert speakers to the Audimax (the original festival venue) and to the Ludwig Forum Aachen.
Bedburg-Hau
Joseph Beuys and the Shamans Exhibition Museum Schloss Moyland 2 May to 29 August 2021 — [curated by Barbara Strieder and Ulrike Bohnet]
In his early works Joseph Beuys repeatedly focused on shamans and on the contexts in which they operate. In a number of Actions he either assumed the role of the shaman or drew on shamanic practices. For Beuys, Eurasia was a spiritual space that stood for the reconciliation of opposites such as reason and intuition. This ethnological exhibition highlights fundamental aspects of historical and contemporary indigenous shamanism and of the shamanic worlds that Beuys so often referred to. It will also include work by contemporary artists such as Marcus Coates, Lili Fischer, Anatol Donkan and Igor Sacharow-Ross, demonstrating the relevance of the topic of shamanism to the current artistic discourse with its particular interest in social issues and ecology.
Bonn
Beuys — Lehmbruck Thinking is Sculpture Bundeskunsthalle Exhibition in cooperation with the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg 25 June to 1 November 2021 — [curated by Johanna Adam]
In 1986, just a few days before his death, Beuys was awarded the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize. In his acceptance speech, he stressed the importance the art of the Expressionist sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck had for him. Marking the 100th birthday of Joseph Beuys, the exhibition »Beuys – Lehmbruck. Thinking is Sculpture« explores this connection and presents the work of these two artists. There are not many artists who caused as radical an upheaval in the history of art as Joseph Beuys. This exhibition brings together a series of key works by Beuys and presents them alongside some of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s most important sculptures. The focus of the exhibition, however, is not on stylistic or formal similarities, instead, it seeks to shed light on a single pivotal question: What is the revolutionary potential of art in the context of its time?
Ticket to the Future Joseph Beuys, Katinka Bock, Jon Rafman Exhibition Kunstmuseum Bonn 7 October 2021 to 9 January 2022 — [curated by Stefanie Kreuzer and Christoph Schreier]
Beuys was a magnificent draughtsman and sculptor and an artist whose ultimate aim was to shape society as a whole. His Multiples, which were intended to bring homeopathic doses of his thinking into every household, served him to this end. Between 1965 and 1986 he created 556 Multiples, of which more than 400 are part of the collection of Kunstmuseum Bonn. Ranging from bags of dried hare’s blood to political manifestos, these works reflect his thinking and his art. The Multiples lead to the centre of his oeuvre as a whole. The social, ecological and existential questions, raised in Beuys’s works underpin the great topicality of his art. His works are signposts for a society in need of reform, which requires lateral thinkers like Beuys. There is growing interest in his art, especially among the younger generation of artists and researchers: Beuys is contemporary! The exhibition draws on the Kunstmuseum’s Multiples and presents them alongside current artistic positions. Thus, the historical view of Beuys’work is also a preview of what is to come.
Dortmund
Technoshamanism Exhibition Hartware MedienKunstVerein 9 October 2021 to 6 March 2022 — [curated by Inke Arns]
With the figure of the shaman that Joseph Beuys cultivated throughout his career as its starting point, this exhibition focuses on »techno-shamanistic« artistic positions today. The artists in question not only regard shamanism as a technology in its own right, they also use other (speculative) technologies to seek out shamanic energies. Many of the tropes that Beuys so iconically employed to heal and transform society, to cultivate a spiritual connection with the environment, to overcome the power and the logic of capital are now deployed by contemporary artists, who thus update his strategies and questions for the digital age.
Duisburg
Lehmbruck — Beuys Everything is Sculpture Exhibition in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn Lehmbruck Museum 26 June to 17 October 2021 — [curated by Söke Dinkla and Jessica Keilholz-Busch]
Is Joseph Beuys an artist? Or is he a shaman, a reformer and political activist who has changed not only art, but society as a whole? The sight of a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck became a pivotal experience for the young Beuys. Both Lehmbruck and Beuys were convinced that art has the power not only to explain the world, but also to change it for the better. In keeping with Beuys’s own maxim that »everything is sculpture«, this exhibition explores the special relationship between two of the most important German artists of the twentieth century. »Sculpture is the essence of things, the essence of nature, of that which is eternally human« – Beuys took this insight of Lehmbruck’s as the starting point for his Social Sculpture, which subsequently revolutionised the art of the twentieth century. Ever since then, sculptural forming – making art – has not primarily referred to the shaping of materials but to the shaping of ideas, the shaping of the social fabric as a whole. The Duisburg exhibition examines the progress of this future-oriented idea from its inception to the present day.
Düsseldorf
Mataré + Beuys + Immendorff An Encounter between the Works of Teacher and Student Exhibition Akademie-Galerie – Die Neue Sammlung (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) 27 March to 20 June 2021 — [curated by Vanessa Sondermann]
In spring 1947 Joseph Beuys became a student in the class of Ewald Mataré at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and in 1951 he became a master student under Mataré. Beuys’s works from these years show that he engaged comprehensively and productively with the aesthetics taught by his teacher, especially with regard to religion, mythology and anthroposophy. Beuys later broke away from traditional notions of art and artistic-didactic concepts both in his Actions and in his teaching With its focus on early drawings, sculptures and woodcuts, this exhibition presents and analyses the proximity and disparity of Mataré and Beuys’s artistic roots. Encounters between the works of teacher and student reveal numerous aesthetic affinities and remarkable parallels in their spiritual lives. In addition, one exhibition room is devoted to works by Jörg Immendorff. In these works Immendorff, the »Beuys Knight« and future professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, reflects on Beuys as a teacher and on his charismatic artistic persona.
Everyone is an Artist Cosmopolitan Exercises with Joseph Beuys Exhibition K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 27 March to 15 August 2021 — [curated by Eugen Blume, Isabelle Malz and Catherine Nichols]
The exhibition provides profound insight into the cosmopolitical thinking of Joseph Beuys as manifested in his Actions. For here – as an acting, speaking, and moving figure – Beuys examined the central and radical idea of his expanded concept of art: »Everyone is an Artist«. The goal of his universalist approach was to renew society from the ground up. In the exhibition, contemporary artists, along with representatives from the most diverse areas of society, enter into a multi-layered, transcultural dialogue with Beuys. From today’s perspective, they confirm, question, and expand his theses on the possibilities of a future conceived in terms of art.
I’m searching for the dumbest person Joseph Beuys and Science Lecture Series Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Art History 12 April to 23 July 2021 — [directed by Timo Skrandies]
This lecture series brings together scholars and scientists from many fields with an interest in Joseph Beuys’s call to create the conditions for a new life that can sustain the kind of thinking that incorporates the principles of sculpture. Beuys’s universal plea for a revolution of concepts will be critically examined through the prism of disciplines ranging from physics to poetry, from economics to the law.
Sculptural Democracy Forms of the »We« Models – Parliaments – Lab Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Public space in Düsseldorf 14 April to 23 July 2021 — [artistic directors: Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols (beuys 2021), Markus Bader, Frauke Gerstenberg and Andrea Hofmann (raumlaborberlin), Ludger Schwarte (Kunstakademie), Timo Skrandies (Heinrich-Heine-Universität)]
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, raumlaborberlin and the project team for »beuys 2021« will explore, discuss, revive, critically question and take forward the stimuli for the radical co-creation of democracy that Beuys developed and transmitted to others. For Beuys those stimuli culminated in his idea of a »university«; like figures such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Dewey before him, Beuys regarded the university as a model of society; Beuys then investigated this idea by setting up his own Free International University (FIU) in 1973.
This jointly conceived, three-part project for »beuys 2021« will open with an action on Beuys’s birthday on 12 May 2021. Between April and June 2021 an experimental architecture will be created under the direction of raumlaborberlin. This structure will be divided into three interlinked areas with space for (1) research and comparison (Models), (2) discussion and negotiation (Parliaments) and (3) communal being, working, thinking, eating and living (Lab).
Let Them Eat Money Which Future?! Guest performance by Deutsches Theater Berlin Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus Spring 2021 — [Andres Veiel in collaboration with Jutta Doberstein]
Are we capable of shaping society and our own future? The play Let Them Eat Money. Which Future?! revolves around this question. For Andres Veiel, director of the award-winning film portrait of Joseph Beuys (Beuys, 2017), this stage play has a lot to do with this artist: »Beuys was an artist who looked ahead. He was already asking the right questions thirty years ago, because he thought his way into the political space.« (Andres Veiel in conversation with Deutsche Presse- Agentur, 2017, trans. from: »Andres Veiel: Beuys stellte die richtigen Fragen«, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 14.02.2017.) On behalf of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Veiel and Jutta Doberstein developed the idea of posing Beuys’s questions once again and of addressing them in a »laboratory« set up as a form of social sculpture. In collaboration with institutes such as the Shell Futures Scenario Department, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace, they examined ways that the public, stakeholders and experts see, foresee – fear and shape – the future.
Beuysradio Radio – Podcast – Audiothek Various locations in NRW 27 March 2021 to 31 January 2022 — [artistic direction: Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols]
Is everyone an artist? Are trees more intelligent than people? Is sculpture a synonym for the humane? Are we the revolution? Do we live in a pseudo-democracy? Are capitalism’s days numbered? Joseph Beuys posed many of the questions that we most urgently face today. beuysradio investigates what Beuys actually said, how that is pertinent and why his ideas remain the subject of such heated debate today. This free online audio programme dedicated to Joseph Beuys presents 100 voices exploring him as a person, 10 podcasts on his most provocative questions, 25 reports on the festivities comprising the centenary programme »beuys 2021« and 5 playlists introducing the music he listened to, made and influenced.
Heiner Goebbels: A House of Call My Imaginary Notebook (2020) Concert Ensemble Modern Orchestra at Tonhalle Düsseldorf 7 September 2021 — [Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Conductor: Vimbayi Kaziboni, lighting director: Heiner Goebbels, sound director: Norbert Ommer]
The Beuys celebrations in 2021 could not pass by without special consideration being given to his impact on other art forms and on the work of artists today whose ideas, methods and themes would hardly have come about in their present form without his influence. The artist and composer Heiner Goebbels is inspired both by Beuys’s musical Fluxus actions and by the political and ecological dimensions of his art. Goebbels’s most recent orchestral work »A House of Call. My Imaginary Notebook« has multiple connections with prominent themes in Beuys’s work: foreign voices from Central Asia, Georgia and Iran are heard in this »lieder evening for orchestra« as are ritual language forms devised by Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller, which are juxtaposed with shamanistic recitations by indigenous peoples in Colombia. As if executing secular responses, the whole orchestra reacts to these cries, utterances, prayers and incantations.
Joseph Beuys-Handbuch Leben – Werk – Wirkung J. B. Metzler Verlag; Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Art History Book Presentation Haus der Universität am Schadowplatz May 2021 — [edited by Timo Skrandies and Bettina Paust]
»Joseph Beuys. Leben – Werk – Wirkung«, a 400-page handbook edited by Timo Skrandies and Bettina Paust, with over 80 articles by around 50 authors, will be the first ever comprehensive compendium on the artist Joseph Beuys. Its publication by Metzler Verlag in Stuttgart in early 2021 will mark the beginning of Beuys’s centenary celebrations. On the one hand, the handbook will serve as a repository of knowledge and ideas for current and future Beuys research and provide inspiration for further research. On the other hand, it is also designed to serve as a standard reference work and source of information for a wider public interested in Beuys and, in so doing, to promote the discussion of his oeuvre. The publication comprises seven section: Time and Persona; Works, Groups of Works, Forms of Work; Recognition; Contexts; People; Trends and Institutions; Terms and Concepts; Reception; Appendix and Index.
Anyone who doesn’t want to think will be thrown [throw themselves] out Joseph Beuys and the Shape of the Future Exhibition Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf 28 October 2021 to 20 January 2022 — [curated by Anne-Marie Franz and Inga Nake]
The exhibition »Anyone who doesn’t want to think will be thrown [throw themselves] out« in the foyer of the University and State Library Düsseldorf at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität focuses on Joseph Beuys’s boxing match for direct democracy through referendums. Beuys’s fight on 8 October 1972, the last day of documenta 5, is symbolic of the physical attrition and absolute commitment without which, according to Beuys, nothing new can be created. Visitors taking the exhibition tour in effect enter the ring for four rounds alongside the artist and thinker Joseph Beuys. The coalescence of Beuys’s artistic career and work, his art and his life, is mirrored in the boxing match. Analogies between boxing and Beuys’s lifelong fight will be explored using boxing terminology and selected objects, including items from the collection of the University and State Library, thereby providing a new perspective on the work of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. The fight for life and death, in the ring and in society, is a fight to shape the future.
Essen
The Invisible Sculpture The Expanded Concept of Art after Joseph Beuys Exhibition Stiftung Zollverein/Ruhr Museum, UNESCO-Welterbe Zollverein, Hall 8 10 May to 26 September 2021 — [curated by Heinrich Theodor Grütter, Rosa Schmitt-Neubauer, Christoph Schurian, Johannes Stüttgen, Achim Weber and Carla Zimmermann]
This exhibition at the UNESCO World Heritage Site highlights the socio-political dimension of the work of Joseph Beuys and addresses its importance for the present and the future. Beuys’s visionary commitment to democracy expanded the international concept of art. This exhibition revisits his work in the context of the present global debate on ecology and democracy. Taking Joseph Beuys’s expanded concept of art as its starting point, »The Invisible Sculpture« resists the historicization and canonization of his work. The juxtaposition of seminal works by Beuys with specially selected materials – including many unpublished items – is designed to reignite the debate regarding the significance of his oeuvre and to locate his work in a broader cultural and socio-political context. To this end, there will be a particular focus on the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of Beuys’s work that relate both to the current discourse on social coexistence and to the relationship between humankind and nature.
Kleve
Intuition! Dimensions of the Early Work of Joseph Beuys 1946–1961 Exhibition Museum Kurhaus Kleve 19 June to 3 October 2021 — [curated by Harald Kunde, Susanne Figner and guest curator Wolfgang Zumdick]
The exhibition »Intuition! Dimensions of the Early Work of Joseph Beuys 1946–1961« examines the period between Joseph Beuys’s return to Kleve after the war at the age of twenty-four and his appointment as a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1961. During this »incubation period«, themes relevant to his future work emerged and a series of three-dimensional essays on these themes now provides a framework for the exhibition: 1. Biography as material for artistic forming, 2. Kindred spirits (Lohengrin, Cloots, Steiner, Lehmbruck), 3. Early companions (Lamers, Getlinger, Mataré), 4. Christian influences and Eurasian horizons, 5. Depictions of animals: from elementary experiences to the body politic, 6. Self-image – image – action, 7. Universalist thinking today? The aim of the exhibition is neither to venerate a local saint nor to topple an artist from an earlier generation. Instead it highlights the influences, ideas and caesuras that saw Beuys develop from a »sensitive traditionalist« into a »visionary social sculptor«.
Krefeld
Beuys and Duchamp Artists of the Future Exhibition Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum 8 October 2021 to 16 January 2022 — [curated by Magdalena Holzhey (Kunstmuseen Krefeld) and Kornelia Röder (Duchamp-Forschungszentrum, Schwerin)]
This exhibition will be the first large-scale juxtaposition of the work of Joseph Beuys with that of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). Beuys repeatedly referred to his »challenger« Duchamp, not least in the Action »Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet« [The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated]. Yet there are in fact deep links and connections between these two artists, which, for all the dissimilarity of their work, can be seen in many themes and aspects of their art. This exhibition will not be purely retrospective, but will review their work from today’s perspective and shed new light on the forward-looking potential of the radical, interdisciplinary strategies of both artists. The dialogue between these two protagonists also raises fundamental questions regarding the role of art in daily life and in society as a whole, and these will be pursued in greater depth with input from works by a number of contemporary artists.
Leverkusen
The Catalyst Joseph Beuys and Democracy today Exhibition Museum Morsbroich 2 May to 29 August 2021 — [curated by Ania Czerlitzki]
Joseph Beuys’s »Straßenaktion« [Street Action] of 1971 in Cologne chimed with the aims of a younger generation that self-confidently demanded the opening-up of society. Beuys sympathized with their revolutionary stance, particularly their ideal of direct democracy, which he supported with his »Straßenaktion«. He felt it was worth fighting for direct democracy as a form of political coexistence, which would see the power to make decisions no longer the preserve of elected representatives but rather the outcome of widespread participation in a daily discourse. Fifty years later, this idea is still topical. The exhibition »The Catalyst« thus examines whether and how, in our current situation – an era of global complexity and digitization that is changing almost all areas of life – new forms of political coexistence can be developed, indeed, whether democratic values are in fact immutable? These questions will be examined on the basis of contemporary artistic positions – sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
Mönchengladbach
Institutional Critique The Museum as a Site of Permanent Conference (J.B.) Exhibition Museum Abteiberg 3 June to 24 October 2021 — [curated by Felicia Rappe and Susanne Titz]
Institutional Critique: The Museum as a Site of Permanent Conference. Two exhibitions displayed at Museum Abteiberg from 3 June to 24 October 2021 as part of »beuys 2021«. The two exhibitions will comprise of one solo exhibition and one archival exhibition. The solo exhibition will comprise of works by the London-based artist Ghislaine Leung as commissioned by Museum Abteiberg and produced in 2020 and 2021. The archival exhibition will comprise of materials by Joseph Beuys from the Collection and the Andersch Collection and Archive at Museum Abteiberg and will be presented alongside materials by FLUXUS and related artists from the 1960s through to the 1980s. The solo exhibition will be curated by Susanne Titz and the archival exhibition by Felicia Rappe. This information is provided as per the required 1000 characters and has been edited by Ghislaine Leung, Susanne Titz and Felicia Rappe. Details are correct as of April 2020 and are subject to change dependent on requirements and resources available.
Wuppertal
The Infinity of the Moment Performances after Joseph Beuys Kulturbüro Wuppertal Various places in Wuppertal 3 to 6 June 2021 — [curated by Bettina Paust, Barbara Gronau (Universität der Künste Berlin) and Timo Skrandies (Heinrich-Heine-Universität)]
In Wuppertal, the city of performance, the Kulturbüro will present a festival from 3 to 6 June 2021 with artistic and scholarly contributions that will engage with the impact of Joseph Beuys’s art on performative trends in art today. It was specifically in the realm of performance that Joseph Beuys so crucially influenced contemporary art. This performance festival will bring together international and local artists and artists’ collectives whose work has widely varied points of contact with Beuys’s Action art. The Infinity of the Moment, which will take place at various locations in Wuppertal, will provide the only platform dedicated to the ephemeral art of performance during the Beuys centenary celebrations. Lectures by leading academics will examine the special features of Beuys’s Actions with a particular focus on their current artistic reception.
Torn out of Time Joseph Beuys: Actions – Photographed by Ute Klophaus. 1965 – 1986 Exhibition Von der Heydt-Museum 19 September 2021 to 9 January 2022 — [curated by Antje Birthälmer]
Taking its lead from the »24-hour Happening« at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in 1965, this exhibition of photographs by Ute Klophaus (1940–2010) focuses on her images of actions by Joseph Beuys. Her shots of moments »torn out of the flow of time« in Beuys’s performances also capture the special charisma, intensity and energy of Beuys in action. This exhibition mainly draws on the wealth of Klophaus photographs in the collection of Lothar Schirmer in Munich. The 24-hour Happening, where other participants included artists such as Nam June Paik, Bazon Brock, Tomas Schmit and Wolf Vostell, was both one of the most important events in the international Fluxus movement and a key experience for Klophaus who was born in Wuppertal. That encounter with Beuys crucially informed her subsequent development and she went on to photograph Beuys and his work for over twenty years. In the process, she developed the ability to give visible form to perceptions that go beyond the visual and to convey a sense of the hidden, elusive factors that also informed Beuys’s designs for the world.