Joseph Beuys (Warhol)
| Joseph Beuys |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Screen printing on acrylic on canvas / museum cardboard |
| 254 / 111.8 x 254 / 76.2 cm |
|
Link to the picture |
Joseph Beuys is the title of a portrait series and a portfolio with screen prints by the American pop art artist Andy Warhol from 1980.
description
The screen prints on acrylic on canvas show the portrait of the German artist Joseph Beuys as a head picture in frontal view (en face) in the dimensions 254 × 254 cm. Warhol depicted Beuys black on black (anthracite), black on white and black on red, whereby he made the latter two as a negative print and sprinkled it with diamond dust . In 1986 Warhol used the Beuys portrait again in his camouflage series, which plays with military camouflage patterns .
Warhol also published the Beuys portraits as limited artist portfolios, each with three serigraphs on Lenox museum cardboard measuring 111.8 × 76.2 cm.
background
At the time when the Beuys portraits were created, at the end of the 1970s, Warhol had a good standing on the art market , but as a serious artist he remained controversial. He enjoyed a higher reputation in Europe than in America, especially in Germany Joseph Beuys praised him as a "sometimes naive, but revolutionary artist".
Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys "officially" met on May 18, 1979 in the Denise René / Hans Mayer gallery in Düsseldorf . According to Warhol biographer David Bourdon , the two artists were "not exactly friends, but they artfully and profoundly expressed their respect."
"Anyone who watched the two of them walk towards each other on the polished marble floor experienced an event whose solemn aura was in no way inferior to a meeting of two rival popes in Avignon," wrote the American critic David Galloway.
The idea for the portrait series arose during Beuys' highly acclaimed retrospective in November 1979 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York . Heiner Bastian , Beuys' private secretary, persuaded Warhol to invite Beuys to the Factory and suggested making a series of portraits. Warhol used a Polaroid photo that depicts Beuys and was made by Christian Skrein as a template for the screen printing series discussed here. The silkscreen portraits were exhibited in several European cities from 1980. Both artists took part in the media-effective exhibition openings, so the two artists met on April 1, 1980 in the gallery of Lucio Amelio in Naples , where Warhol showed the portraits in the exhibition "Joseph Beuys by Andy Warhol".
Reviews and comments
“I like Beuys' politics. He should come to the USA and be politically active there. That would be great ... he would have to become president. "
“By swapping the light and dark values, Warhol wanted to convey something of the unfathomable nature of this mysterious German artist,” said Warhol biographer David Bourdon.
Victor Bockris found in his Warhol biography that the Beuys portraits, “one of his rare series of portraits by another contemporary artist, were among Warhol's strongest.” He saw diamond dust “as an American response to materials that Beuys used in his apocalyptic works . "
David Galloway noted in Beuys and Warhol “a deep-seated philosophical affinity. Both had waged wars against the traditional and gallery-bound concept of originality and both have the seemingly alchemical ability to make 'high' art out of banal everyday objects. "
literature
- David Galloway: Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks ; in Art in America , vol. 76, no. 7 (July 1988): Special Issue “Art & Money”
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b c Victor Bockris: Andy Warhol . Claasen, Düsseldorf 1989, p. 462
- ^ A b David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, p. 385
- ↑ a b David Galloway: Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks ; in: Art in America , July 1988, p. 121
- ↑ About pictures that say more than 1,000 words. Ö1 , January 2, 2013, accessed on January 2, 2013 (German). In contrast to this information: David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, p. 385. According to Bourdon, Warhol made the Polaroids during the first encounter.