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WAR and VIOLENCE: GLOBAL ART Since 1960: FOCUS (Joseph Beuys, Leon Golub, Anselm Kiefer, and Rachel Whiteread) ONLINE ASSIGNMENT

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WAR and VIOLENCE: GLOBAL ART Since 1960: FOCUS (Joseph Beuys, Leon Golub, Anselm Kiefer, and Rachel Whiteread) ONLINE ASSIGNMENT WAR and VIOLENCE: GLOBAL ART since 1960: FOCUS (Joseph Beuys, Leon Golub, Anselm Kiefer, and Rachel Whiteread) ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: https://www.khanacademy. org/humanities/global- culture/conceptual- performance/a/joseph- beuys-fat-chair TITLE or DESIGNATION: Fat Chair ARTIST: Joseph Beuys CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Fluxus (Conceptual Art) DATE: 1964 C.E. MEDIUM: fat, wax, wire, wooden chair TITLE or DESIGNATION: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare ARTIST: Joseph Beuys CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Fluxus (Conceptual/ Performance Art) DATE: 1965 C.E. MEDIUM: TITLE or DESIGNATION: Mercenaries IV ARTIST: Leon Golub CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Neo-Expressionism DATE: 1980 C.E. MEDIUM: acrylic on canvas TITLE or DESIGNATION: Nigredo ARTIST: Anselm Kiefer CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Neo-Expressionism DATE: 1984 C.E. MEDIUM: oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac and straw TITLE or DESIGNATION: Holocaust Memorial at Judenplatz in Vienna ARTIST: Rachel Whiteread CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Global Contemporary DATE: 2000 C.E. MEDIUM: concrete WAR and VIOLENCE: GLOBAL ART since 1960: SELECTED TEXT (Joseph Beuys, Leon Golub, Anselm Kiefer, and Rachel Whiteread) Joseph Beuys. Fat Chair, 1964, fat, wax, wire, wooden chair The first encounter with a work by Joseph Beuys is often surprising. Look, for example, at Fat Chair. It is composed of an old, rather ordinary chair with fat placed on the seat. Keep in mind all of the features that fat possesses as a material, and it is clear that a lot of fat and an old chair are not meant to produce feelings of esthetic pleasure. Other materials that Beuys uses in his work: wax, filth, animal hair, and blood, possess similar qualities. Each is a natural material but none are very pleasant in their appearance, structure or smell. These works of art are part of Beuys’ broader artistic strategy, which can be called “shamanism.” Beuys often used natural materials and cult-like ceremonies through which he tried to underline the importance of the irrational and mystical in human beings. With this practice, Beuys tried to oppose the “rational” in contemporary society. He perceived his art as a social mission, needed to heal post-war German society. He wanted to heal, first of all, those who built Auschwitz—that terrible symbol of Nazi horror. This task required an even deeper reform–since in Beuys’ eyes, the real source of National Socialism was found in the extreme rationality of modern society. Beuys’ commitment to artworks stimulating thought about art and life derived in part from his experiences as a pilot during World War II. After the enemy shot down his plane over the Crimea, nomadic Tatars nursed him back to health by swaddling his body in fat and felt to warm him. Fat and felt thus symbolized healing and regeneration to Beuys, and he incorporated these materials into many of his sculptures and actions. Beuys recalls the event by saying: “Had it not been for the Tartars I would not be alive today. They were the nomads of the Crimea, in what was then no man's land between the Russian and German fronts, and favoured neither side. I had already struck up a good relationship with them, and often wandered off to sit with them. ‘Du nix njemcky’ they would say, ‘du Tartar,’ and try to persuade me to join their clan. Their nomadic ways attracted me of course, although by that time their movements had been restricted. Yet, it was they who discovered me in the snow after the crash, when the German search parties had given up. I was still unconscious then and only came round completely after twelve days or so, and by then I was back in a German field hospital. So the memories I have of that time are images that penetrated my consciousness.” For Beuys, extreme rationality, efficiency and technocracy, defined the modern era; and although seemingly good, he viewed these trends as extremely dangerous. The Holocaust was only possible because of Germany’s rationality, efficiency and functionality coupled with its specific ideological premises. Beuys sought to contrast the Holocaust’s rationality with the irrationality he believed could be found in so-called “primitive societies.” Joseph Beuys. Schlitten Irrationality, understood in this way, (Sled), 1969, wooden sled, focused on concrete people, not on felt, belts, flashlight, fat abstract or theoretical principles. and rope; sled stamped Beuys suggested that only this could with oil paint prevent human destruction. “Shamanism” was a part of this “primitive” practice of healing human beings physically, morally, and spiritually. Joseph Beuys. How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (performance at Schmela Gallery, Düsseldorf ), 1965 This one-person event consisted of stylized actions evoking a sense of mystery and sacred ritual. Beuys appeared in a room hung with his drawings, cradling a dead hare to which he spoke softly. Beuys coated his head with honey covered with gold leaf, creating a shimmering mask. In this manner, he took on the role of the shaman. As a shaman, he believed he was acting to help revolutionize human thought so each human being could become a truly free and creative person. Beuys cradled a dead hare lovingly in his arms for three hours, walking it around and showing his drawings to it whilst explaining them to it in an inaudible whisper. The hare symbolizes birth for Beuys because it is born and burrows underground, later to emerge from the earth. “By putting honey on my head I am clearly doing something involved with thinking”, Beuys said. The image of the man made mute by his thinking, his over-rationalization, is deeply unsettling. Perhaps this serves to emphasize Beuys’ opinion that western society is too rational. Beuys claimed he preferred to explain pictures to a dead hare than to other people. He said, “A Hare comprehends more than many human beings with their stubborn rationalism …I told him that he needed only to scan the picture to understand what is really important about it”. Hi left foot rested on felt, suggesting spiritual warmth, while his right foot rested on steel, symbolizing cold hard reason. Challenging sculptural conventions with unorthodox materials - such as bee's wax, fat, felt and dead animals - Beuys pushed the boundaries of what constitutes art, declaring "everyone is an artist" and coining the term “social sculpture” to encapsulate his anarchic program for transforming society. Leon Golub. Mercenaries IV, 1980, acrylic on canvas During his long and successful career as a painter, Leon Golub (1922-2004) expressed a brutal vision of contemporary life. Born in Chicago and trained at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago, he is best known for his two series of paintings tilted Assassins and Mercenaries. In these large-scale works on unstretched canvases, anonymous characters inspired by newspaper and magazine photographs participate in atrocious street violence, terrorism and torture. The paintings have a universal impact because they suggest not specific stores but a condition of being. Mercenaries IV, a canvas rivaling the monumental history paintings of the 19th century in size, presents a mysterious tableau of five tough freelance military professionals willing to fight, for a price, for any political cause. The three clustering at the right side of the canvas react with tense physical gestures to something one of the two other mercenaries standing at the far left is saying. The dark uniforms and skin tones of the four black fighters flatten their figures and make them stand out against the searing dark red background. The slightly modulated background seems to push their forms forward up against the picture plane and becomes an echoing void in the space between the two groups. Golub painted the mercenaries so that the viewer’s eye is level with the menacing figures’ knees. He placed the men so close to the front plane of the work that the lower edge of the painting cuts off their feet, thereby trapping the viewer in the painting’s compressed space. Golub emphasized both the scarred light tones of the white mercenary’s skin and the weapons. Modeled with shadow and gleaming highlights, the guns contrast with the harshly scraped, flattened surfaces of the figures. The rawness of the canvas reinforces the rawness of the imagery. Golub often dissolved certain areas with solvent after applying pigment and scraped off applied paint with, among other tools, a meat cleaver. Anselm Kiefer. Nigredo, 1984, oil paint on photosensitized fabric, acrylic emulsion, straw, shellac, relief paint on paper pulled from painted wood Neo-Expressionism was by no means a solely American movement. German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945), who studied art in Düsseldorf with Joseph Beuys in the early 1970s, has produced some of the most lyrical and engaging works of recent decades. His paintings, like Nigredo, are monumental in scale, recalling Abstract Expressionist works. They draw the viewer to their textured surfaces, made more complex by the addition of materials such as straw and lead. His images function on a mythological or metaphorical level as well as on a historically specific one. Kiefer’s works of the 1970s and 1980s often involve a reexamination of German history, particularly the painful Nazi era of 1933-1945, and evoke the feeling of despair. Kiefer believes Germany’s participation in World War II and the Holocaust left permanent scars on the souls of the German people and on the souls of all humanity. Nigredo (blackening) pulls the viewer into an expressive landscape depicted using Renaissance perspective principles. This landscape, however, is far from pastoral or carefully cultivated. Rather, it appears bleak and charred. Although it does not make specific reference to the Holocaust, this incinerated landscape indirectly alludes to the horrors of that historical event.
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