The pack (the pack)

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The pack (the pack)
Joseph Beuys , 1969
installation
New gallery , Kassel

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The pack (the pack) is an installation by the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) from 1969.

description

The plant consists of a VW bus , built in 1961, from whose open tailgate 24 sports sleds imported from the GDR with braking devices are set up in three rows next to each other in opposite directions and thus seem to "swarm" out of the vehicle. On each sledge there is a small amount of fat as well as a flashlight and a rolled up felt blanket, which are strapped with several artery tie-off straps. One sled differs from the other examples in the mirror-image arrangement of the utensils .

Background and interpretation

Beuys discovered the VW bus during his stay in Berlin in February 1969 , where he carried out his action I try to let you free . The bus, which shortly before had not passed the security check by the TÜV , belonged to the Berlin gallery owner and friend of Joseph Beuys, René Block , who used it to transport his pictures and objects and also participated in the first presentation of the work.

According to Beuys' own statement, luggage on the sledge is “ orientation , nutrition , keeping warm, that is what you need in the extreme, [...] at the lowest level of life in order to survive”.

An interpretation at the Kassel location of the installation is based on the long refuted legend about Beuys' plane crash in the Crimea and the subsequent care by nomadic Crimean Tatars with warming felt blankets and anointing fat, which is based on the Kassel location of the installation, which comes from the opposite directions of movement of the bus and the Schlitten reads out two different forms of life: that of pre-industrial societies and that of the western, technologized world.

The music and art critic Reinhard Ermen , author of a Beuys monograph, is fascinated by the sculpture “its never-ending ambiguity”.

“In addition to the optimistic scenario, there is also a hint of a (coming) disaster , based on the motto 'The rats are leaving the sinking ship'. In any case, hope belongs to those who break up in three gently curved rows, who have spilled out of the body of the heavy old machine. The survival ration strapped to them, namely fat disc and felt blanket, are the plastic materials of the future (of Joseph Beuys); They also bring their own light in the form of a flashlight, while the wooden sleigh itself tells of a youthful thirst for adventure. "

- Reinhard Ermen : 2007, Joseph Beuys, p. 73

“The sleds develop a tremendous aggressiveness here, they act like well-equipped invaders [...]. The members of the pack do not come as friends, they resemble intruders who are resolutely sliding forward [...]. Relocated back to the historical context from which it emerged in 1969, it develops a political statement of both sensual and ingenious power. 'The pack', it stands for the invasion of the Americans in Vietnam, for police officers working against demonstrating students, for the invasion of the Warsaw Pact in the CSSR, for the action of the Italian police against demonstrating striking workers in Milan in autumn 1969, etc. "

- Michael Schwarz : 1980, On the Realism of Political Conceptual Art, in: Kunstforum International, Volume 42, p. 26

Provenance

The installation was created successively. First Beuys built the sledge in 1969 under the title Die Meute in the hall of the Düsseldorf Art Academy with the flashlights switched on. As Das Rudel , the work was first exhibited in the VW transporter at the Cologne art market in the same year . The double title The pack was given to the installation in 1970 as part of the group exhibition “Strategy: get arts - Contemporary Art from Düsseldorf” at the Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh .

The natural scientist and non-fiction author Jost Herbig (1938–1995) and his wife Barbara Herbig acquired the work on the Cologne art market from René Block, who offered it for 110,000 DM , corresponding to the prices of a work by Andy Warhol or Robert Rauschenberg at the time. As part of her private collection of contemporary art, it came on loan to the Neue Galerie in Kassel. In addition to The pack (the pack) , the extensive collection also contained other works by Beuys, consisting of drawings, objects and showcases. Since 1976 it has been located in a room in the Neue Galerie in Kassel assigned to Beuys , which the artist furnished himself. He determined the location of the bus and the order of the sledges. In addition to the Beuys block , a seven-room installation in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt , the Kassel room is one of the most important installations by Joseph Beuys.

After the Herbigs initially did not want to extend the loan agreement for their collection for another ten years at the end of the 1980s, the State of Hesse, with the support of the Hessian Cultural Foundation and the State Cultural Foundation , acquired the Beuys room for 16 million marks in 1993 and received an extension of the contract. After the death of her husband, Barbara Herbig withdrew the remaining 114 works of art from her collection from the Neue Galerie at the end of 1997.

Parallel to the sledges from The pack (the pack) , the multiple sledge , Edition René Block, Berlin, and Ake pack , “a single stray [sledge] from The pack (the pack) ”, were created today in a showcase in room 7 im “Block Beuys”.

Exhibitions

The pack has been loaned out three times since 1976 . From November 2 to January 2, 1979 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of the large Beuys retrospective - the first comprehensive presentation of his works in the United States , which the artist himself had set up . In 2005, the installation made a guest appearance at the Tate Modern in London from February 4 to May 2 and was on view from September 11, 2010 to January 16, 2011 as part of the large Beuys retrospective Parallel Processes in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen , Düsseldorf. There the sledges are set up in a more compact form, in rows of four instead of three, in contrast to the Kassel arrangement that Beuys had arranged himself. The curators were guided by an earlier arrangement of this installation that was shown at the Cologne art market in 1969. During documenta 14, The pack was still exhibited in the Neue Galerie in Kassel. Officially, Beuys' installation was not part of the documenta exhibition .

literature

  • Marion Ackermann (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Parallel processes , Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Schirmer / Mosel , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-941773-03-5
  • Reinhard Ermen: Joseph Beuys . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-50623-9
  • State Museums of Kassel. Neue Galerie, Joseph Beuys: Room in the Neue Galerie , publisher: Kulturstiftung der Länder / Hessische Kulturstiftung / Land Hessen, (PATRIMONIA 73)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the secondary literature, the title of the installation is offered in a wide variety. The chosen name follows Marion Ackermann (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Parallel processes , Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2010, p. 209 ff.
  2. ↑ Lothar Schirmer (ed.): Joseph Beuys: A work overview . Munich 1996, plate 107
  3. ↑ a b c d Ulf Jensen: The pack (the pack) . In: Marion Ackermann (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Parallel processes . Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf, Munich 2010, p. 210
  4. ↑ Joseph Beuys in conversation with Wulf Herzogenrath, January 19, 1972, quoted from: Marion Ackermann (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Parallel processes , Munich 2010, p. 210
  5. ↑ See the tablet of the Neue Galerie in Kassel ( memento of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 13, 2010
  6. ↑ Reinhard Ermen: Joseph Beuys . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2007, p. 73
  7. ^ Marianne Heinz: Joseph Beuys: Room in the Neue Galerie, Staatliche Museen Kassel. In: Kassel State Museums. Neue Galerie, Joseph Beuys: Room in the Neue Galerie , publisher: Kulturstiftung der Länder / Hessische Kulturstiftung / Land Hessen, (PATRIMONIA 73), p. 7
  8. ↑ Dirk Schwarze: The conquest of space
  9. ↑ Dirk Schwarze: Does the Herbig Collection move away in 1997? In: HNA , July 15, 1996, accessed August 10, 2010
  10. ↑ Dirk Schwarze: The context is important . In: HNA , January 15, 1998, accessed August 10, 2010
  11. ↑ Eva, Wenzel and Jessyka Beuys: Joseph Beuys, Block Beuys , Munich 1990, Schirmer / Mosel, ISBN 3-88814-288-1 , p 386
  12. ↑ a b "Rudel" is a guest in London. Beuys work is loaned for the exhibition at Tate Modern. HNA January 7, 2005; archived from the original on February 6, 2013 ; accessed on June 11, 2016 .
  13. ^ Mark Rosenthal, Sean Rainbird , Claudia Schmuckli: Joseph Beuys. Actions, showcases, environments . The Menil Collection, Houston October 8, 2004 to January 2, 2005, Tate Modern, London February 4 to May 2, 2005, Yale University Press 2004, ISBN 0-300-10496-0 , p. 188
  14. ↑ See photos in: Marion Ackermann (Ed.): Joseph Beuys. Parallel processes . Exhibition catalog, North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection, Düsseldorf. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2010, pp. 209 and 211.

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 37.1 ″  N , 9 ° 29 ′ 41.9 ″  E