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CONTINUANCE From the time of his introduction to
the international art world
through his contact with Fluxus in the early 1960s, Beuys evolved into
a true multimedia artist--before the term had cachet. As he embraced
the medium of performance and the use of electronic media to explore
the conceptual ground of communication--the processes of thought and
language, the polarities of sound and silence--he continued to produce
powerful works of visual art. In constantly combining and
recombining these media as vehicles for his ideas, he marked new
ground in each of these areas, and in the "Fluxus" terrain of
intermedia. Beuys became a well-known international artist in the 1970s, and
his work was exhibited in museums in Europe, the United States, Japan,
and Australia. He also became a media icon, partly of his own
making, constantly being photographed and videotaped--and he
used his media persona to promote the ideological causes that drove
his artistic career. Although he continued to make art as a vehicle
to bring about discourse, in his later career his interest in
communication shifted from the conceptual to the pragmatic--his
imperative focus now on political activism and educational reform.
His actions became lectures in which he directly addressed his
audiences, often using the blackboard as a demonstrative tool.
Perhaps he finally had erased the line between art and life. Beuys pursued the idea that society itself is not an abstract
entity but an art form--in constant flux--and capable of being
"sculpted." His involvement in the fields of politics and education
in order to effect real change reflected his goal to sculpt the
social body. To this end, Beuys established the Referendum for
Direct Democracy in 1970 and the Free International University (FIU) in
1971, traveling in Western Europe and the U.S. to establish branches
of the FIU--a university that would admit all students and function
outside of the existing academic system.
Beuys' political and ecological activism helped to found Germany's
Greens. Begun in 1982, Beuys created a living, ongoing artwork
through the installation
City-Reforestation
Instead of
City-Administration 7,000 Oaks. In 1985, near the end of his life, Beuys reiterated the
fundamental connection between thought, language, art, and evolution
that persisted as fundamental elements of his Weltanschauung (world view): "The expanded concept of art is not a theory but a way of
proceeding which says that the inner eye is very much more crucial
than the external images that develop anyway. The precondition for
good outward pictures, which can also be hung in museums, is that the
inner image, the thought-form, the structure of thought, imagination,
and feeling, has the quality required of a corresponding picture. I
therefore shift the picture back to its place of origin. I go back
to the sentence: In the beginning was the word. The word is a form.
That is the evolutionary principle as such. This principle of
evolution must spring out of man." |