Miško Šuvaković Epistemology of Art - TkH

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missed in 1972. His artistic work and life indeed feature as instances
of individual mythologies, because he transformed each segment of his
daily life into an exceptional story (interest in science, war, initiation
in the Tatar tribe, life in solitude with animals, ‘dress code’, relations
with students, controversial political work, alternative pedagogy), in
place of anticipated works of art. For Beuys, the work of art is merely
a conceptualized trace of his life pursuits:
It is a form of spare energy. 136
He expanded the realm of sculptor’s work into different spheres of
behavioral activism (actions, happenings, performances, installations)
by exposing complex theoretical, political, mythomanic and spectacular
relations with anti- or post-pedagogy 137 , anarchism, ecology,
historical materialism, anthroposophy 138 , de-nazification, German Romanticism,
utopian visionary work, alchemy, occultism 139 , society of
spectacle etc. His basic concept of sociability was based on ideas of
horizontal mapping of ‘forms of life’ and, on the other hand, ideas
of direct (non-representative) democracy. Paradoxically, for Beuys,
sculpture had become a demonstrative and open conceptual contingency
and phenomenal realization of events happening among the
people and for the people. 140 His artistic development indeed rests
on three vitalistic points: (i) German late Romanticist and Expressionist
traditions featuring affinity for utopian/visionary work, search for
Gesamtkunstwerk 141 , or art as the polygon for re-creation of a society
136 Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, „Razgovor“ (Interview), from Ješa Denegri (ed), Dossier
Bojs, DAF, Zagreb, 2003, pp. 433-434.
137 Gregory L. Ulmer, „Performance: Joseph Beuys“, from Applied Grammatology –
Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys, The Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore, 1985, pp. 225-264.
138 Sigrun Paas, „Joseph Beuys i Rudolf Steiner“, from Ješa Denegri (ed), Dossier Bojs,
DAF, Zagreb, 2003, pp. 225-242.
139 J. F. Moffitt, Occultism in Avant-Garde Art: The Case of Joseph Beuys, UMI Research
Press, Ann Arbor, 1988.
140 Armin Zweite, „Plastička teorija Josepha Bojsa i rezervoar njegovih tema“, from
Ješa Denegri (ed), Dossier Bojs, DAF, Zagreb, 2003, p. 185.
141 Harald Szeemann, Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk. Europäische Utopien seit 1800,
Aarau/KH, Zürich, 1983.
and its traumas, (ii) international fluxus and, consequently, multimedial
opening of the work to hybrid situations and events, and (iii)
European conceptual art as an attempt at post-symbolic re-creation
of metaphysical events in the art world. His pedagogic work was vitalist
and activist, being based upon the mythical-messianic concept of
designing and shaping individual and social life through direct interpersonal
exchange. His pedagogy abounded in contradictions because
he plainly confronted creative attitude of a charismatic professor with
demands for direct democracy – decision-making in art and political
activity. Nevertheless, he perceived the very work of art as a mode
of social-political action and interests pertaining to the contemporary
capitalist world. Beuys implemented his activist ideas oscillating between
high/elite and alternative art:
It could be said that this is the theory of work: each work has a sort
of relation towards the art, and the art does not represent any more
a type of isolated action or gathering with people capable to do the
art while the others must do something else. That is exactly the aim
of my effort. 142
At the same time, Beuys’ work from the period between the last utopian
neo- and post-avantgardes and the rising postmodern, assumes a
character of spectacle. He introduced organic processuality of matter
or being to mass-media spectacle: by way of a gesture apparently shamanistic,
indeed the shaman is de-realized. Nevertheless, the artistic
super star is born. His teaching at the Düsseldorf Academy was set
in a spectacular manner, i.e. so that effects of charismatic actions on
the part of the professor and critical democratic political work on
the part of his students become a demonstration, visible and manifest.
Contradictory spectacular relationship between the charismatic
teacher and his activist-leaning students was not a simple confrontation
and paradox, but a form of social practice of seduction wherein
‘learning’ took place as a concurrent process of seduction (fatal proximity
of object and subject) and demystification (critique of the fateful
confusion between objects and subjects of art, or politics).
142 Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, „Razgovor“ (Interview), from Ješa Denegri (ed), Dossier
Bojs, DAF, Zagreb, 2003, p. 433.