Lightning strike with light on deer

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Lightning with Stag in its Glare (Engl. Lightning with Stag in Its Glare ) is one of the last great Environments of the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). It was produced in an edition of five copies.

background

The components of the group of works were on view in 1982 at the Zeitgeist exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Joseph Beuys had exhibited a “workshop” there in the atrium, an environment entitled Deer Monuments (± Wurst – Lehm – Werkstatt) , which showed assemblages in different materials from the years 1948 to 1982. Beuys had the idea of ​​having parts of this group of works cast during the construction of his temporary “workshop”. Between 1983 and 1985 this project was carried out in collaboration with the Noack foundry in Berlin. All parts were cast in bronze, only the deer sculpture was cast in aluminum.

One of the four copies of Blitzschlag with Lichtschein auf Hirsch (1958–1985) was acquired in the gallery of Rudolf Zwirner in the summer of 1986 by cultural department head Hilmar Hoffmann - at the suggestion of Peter Iden - for the city of Frankfurt am Main for two and a half million DM. To accommodate the work in the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, the construction plans of a museum room in the new building were adapted to the size of the work. Further examples are in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao ⊙ , in the Tate Gallery of Modern Art ⊙ in London (on loan from the Daros Collection ) and in the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), North Adams (USA). Beuys transferred the title of the room with “Lightning with a glare on the stag”.

The work - the second of the four casts - was shown in 1987 at documenta 8 in the central hall of the Fridericianum in Kassel , which as a whole was dedicated to the memory of the artist who died the previous year.

Structure, arrangement and content of the room installation

Lightning strike with light on deer (external weblink)

Guggenheim Collection, Bilbao

The group of works, composed of 39 parts, consists of:

  • Lightning strike: the over six meter high cast of the clay mountain exhibited at the Zeitgeist exhibition (dimensions: 6.24 × 2.48 × 0.50 m),
  • Deer: old ironing board that lies on two halves of a stick, which in turn were screwed onto segments of an oak log and cast as an assemblage in aluminum (dimensions: 0.48 × 1.04 × 1.72 m),
  • Primeval animals: 35 "clay lumps" (clay), which are grouped as objects around the deer (different dimensions),
  • Goat: an iron cart on three wheels, on which a bronze cast of a pickaxe is set up and which is set up next to the lightning strike (dimensions: 0.49 × 0.39 × 0.72 m), and
  • Boothia Felix : Cast of a soil interspersed with roots and pottery shards on a sculptor's modeling foot on which there is a small compass (dimensions: 1.60 × 0.40 × 0.39 m).

literature

  • documenta 8 catalog. Volume 2. Kassel 1987, ISBN 3-925272-13-5 .
  • Heiner Bastian : Joseph Beuys. Lightning strike with light on deer 1958–1985. Benteli, Bern 1989, ISBN 3-7165-0562-5 .
  • Mark Rosenthal: Joseph Beuys. Lightning strike with light on deer. Writings of the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-88270-452-7 .
  • Wenzel Beuys: Lightning strike with light on deer, 1958–1985 by Joseph Beuys. Edition Staeck, Heidelberg 1987; English edition, Heidelberg 1988, no ISBN.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bastian, p. 68 (documentation): Four copies were intended for sale, one for the family archive.
  2. ↑ Rudolf Zwirner: I wanted always present , Wienand, Cologne, 2019 ISBN 978-3-86832-529-4 , p. 204
  3. ^ Joseph Beuys Lightning with Stag in Its Glare. In: massmoca.org. MASS MoCA, accessed February 15, 2020 (American English).
  4. ↑ Wenzel Beuys: Lightning strike with light on Hirsch, 1958–1985 by Joseph Beuys. Edition Staeck, Heidelberg 1987, p. 7; Facsimile of the manuscript by Joseph Beuys from 1986.
  5. ↑ hr , May 11, 2012: Review dOCUMENTA (13). ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )