Tram stop (room installation)

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Tram stop (detail)
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Tram stop / Tramstop / Fermata del Tram, 1961–1976, A Monument to the Future (the full title) is a room installation by the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986). Beuys originally created this installation for the German pavilion at the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976. The environment is now in the original first version in the Kröller-Müller Museum , Otterlo . A second version exists in the Marx Collection (currently located in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin ).

history

In the late 1920s, when Beuys wanted to return home in Kermesdahlstrasse after visiting his uncle Hubert Beuys, he had to wait at the tram stop "Am Eisernen Mann" on Nassauer Allee, next to which there is a memorial that has been erected since 1829 found. It was a trophy mark from the Baroque period that the Klevian governor Prince Johann Mauritz of Nassau-Siegen had erected in 1654. This monument called 'Cupido' was named “Iron Man” in 1920 after the Kleve - Bedburg-Hau tram line went into operation. It is one of the monuments that was not destroyed after the invasion and destruction of the French revolutionary troops in Kleve in 1794 . Around a vertically erected cast-iron field snake were four mortar kettles sunk into the ground, made of the same material, "which contrasted with the shiny iron of the tram tracks" .

The Cupid column experienced several new installations. When Nassauer Allee was widened in the course of urban development measures in March 1956, the installation looked as if it had been deposited. In 1973 it was moved to its current location (Nassauer Allee / corner of Lindenallee) after it had been installed on the eastern side of the avenue in 1963. As an adult, Beuys discovered that Nassau had several of these “Monuments of Sweet Peace”, as they were once titled, erected as memorials to an eighty-year war over Kleve. All the monuments consisted of weapons, ammunition pots and cannon balls. Moreover, as a child, Beuys said he was fascinated by the heavy, sparkling tram cars.

The work

Tram stop (external web link)

These childhood memories formed the starting point for the tram stop, as it was first seen in 1976 at the Venice Biennale. After Beuys was selected for the German Pavilion in 1976 by Klaus Gallwitz , at that time commissioner for the Venice Biennale, alongside Jochen Gerz and Reiner Ruthenbeck , he worked for two weeks in the spring on the creation of the cast of the 'Cupid Column'. For the installation of the column in Venice, a hole was drilled in the center of the room down to the lagoon water and four holes were opened for the four mortars grouped around the column.

The current condition, as it can be seen in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, consists of a slightly bent, 8.60 m long, rusty tram track, the running surface of which was previously bare. Next to the rail are four rusty, sharp-edged pipes one behind the other and parallel to them is a field snake, a cannon type of the early modern era, which still has the assembly grooves of a carriage rod . At the mouth of the field snake is a cast-iron head with a rigid, suffering facial expression, the origin of which probably goes back to a head that Beuys' student Beatrix Sassen had made from clay in 1963. An angle iron and several rods (drill rods) are placed in front of the head , which can be connected with rivets to form a long rod. The field snake, the head and the four pipes are casts of original objects. In contrast to the current version in Otterlo, the environment was installed upright at the 1976 Biennale.

literature

  • Heiner Bastian (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Sculptures and objects. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88814-264-4 .
  • Friends of the Kurhaus Museum and Koekkoek-Haus Kleve e. V. (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. 'Tram Stop'. A monument to the future. Kleve 2000, ISBN 3-934935-00-1 .
  • Guido de Werd (foreword): Fritz Getlinger. Joseph Beuys and the 'tram stop'. Museum Kurhaus Kleve, March 19 to June 18, 2000, Kleve 2000, ISBN 3-934935-01-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guido de Werd (foreword): Fritz Getlinger. Joseph Beuys and the 'tram stop' . Museum Kurhaus Kleve, March 19 to June 18, 2000, Kleve 2000, p. 8.
  2. ↑ Friends of the Kurhaus Museum and Koekkoek-Haus Kleve e. V. (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. 'Tram Stop'. A monument to the future . Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve 2000, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Friends of the Kurhaus Museum and Koekkoek-Haus Kleve e. V. (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. 'Tram Stop'. A monument to the future, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Guido de Werd (foreword): Fritz Getlinger. Joseph Beuys and the 'tram stop' . Kleve 2000, p. 20; Plate 4.
  5. ^ Museums in Cologne ( Memento from September 18, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Guido de Werd (foreword): Fritz Getlinger. Joseph Beuys and the 'tram stop', p. 10 f.
  7. ↑ Guido de Werd (foreword): Fritz Getlinger. Joseph Beuys and the 'tram stop', pp. 57, 60 f.
  8. ↑ OLG Düsseldorf, judgment of October 21, 2003, Az. I-20 U 170/02 . Website in the database openjur.de , accessed on December 30, 2015