Joseph Beuys was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
He was also one of the most charismatic and controversial.
He blurred the lines between art and life
and believed that socially and spiritually engaged artists
had the power to change the world.
Joseph Beuys: My personal history is of interest
only in so far as I have tried
to use my life and myself
as a tool.
It was in nineteen hundred and forty three
my Junkers 87 was hit by Russian
anti aircraft fire
and I crashed in a snowstorm in the Crimea
in the no-mans land
between the German and the Russian fronts.
I was found in the wreckage
by a clan of nomadic Tartars.
They covered my body in fat
to help it regenerate heat
and wrapped it in felt
as an insulator to keep
the warmth in.
This story was frequently told by Beuys
to explain why he used common materials
such as fat and felt
in his work.
It was also mythological.
His plane had crashed in the Crimea
but his rescue by the Tartars
was a complete fiction.
For Beuys this wasn’t important.
He saw art as a magical, transformative force
and believed that a powerful myth
contained more truth than every day reality.
This film from 1974
shows Beuys wrapped in felt and being taken on a stretcher
to a New York Gallery.
He’s not injured in any way.
It’s all part of a live art performance
or 'action' as he called them
These actions were intense, ritualistic encounters
and none more so than this one.
This is a wild Coyote
and Beuys is about to spend three days
in its company.
The Coyote was one of the most important symbols
in Native American mythology
but European settlers
saw it as a pest to be eradicated.
By forming a relationship with this coyote
Beuys believed he was helping to heal
America’s racial and economic wounds.
Joseph Beuys: Each one of us
has a creative potential
which is hidden by competitiveness
and success aggression.
Environmental pollution advances parallel
with the pollution of the world within us.
Hope is denounced as utopian or illusory
and discarded hope breeds violence.
It is no longer regarded as romantic
but exceedingly realistic
to fight for every tree
every plot of undeveloped land
every stream as yet un-poisoned
every old town centre
and against every thoughtless
reconstruction scheme.
From the mid 70's on Beuys used his actions
as forums for his political and environmental beliefs.
An advocate of grassroots democracy
and a founder member of the German Green Party
he went on lecturing tours
sketching out his radical ideas on large blackboards.
He wanted us to think of society as a giant social sculpture
and ourselves as artists with the power to shape it.
During this period
Beuys was a frequent visitor to Scotland.
He was drawn here
by an intense interest in Celtic mythology, culture and landscape.
This film by Scottish artist Rory McEwan
documents his trip to Rannoch Moor
with gallerist Richard Demarco.
Beuys found this a profoundly inspiring landscape
and he paid his respects in his own idiosyncratic way
by carving a translucent beating heart
out of a slab of gelatine.
Joseph Beuys: I believe that a human being
is fundamentally a spiritual being
and that our vision of the world
must be extended to encompass
all the invisible energies
with which we have lost contact
or from which we have become alienated.
Joseph Beuys’s methods were often mysterious
but his intentions were clear.
He wanted to communicate
the social function and healing power of art.
The images he created
haunt and challenge to this day.