How to explain the pictures to the dead rabbit

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How to explain the pictures to the dead rabbit was an action by the artist Joseph Beuys on November 26, 1965.

procedure

At the beginning of the campaign in the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf, Beuys locked the door from the inside and let the visitors outside. You could only watch the process through windows. With his head completely covered with gold leaf, gold dust and honey, he began to explain the pictures to the dead rabbit: With the animal in his arms, and apparently in conversation with him, he walked through the exhibition , from object to object. Only after three hours was the audience allowed into the rooms. Beuys was sitting there with the rabbit in his arms, with his back to the audience on a stool in the entrance area.

Interpretation and context

The action is considered the climax of Joseph Beuys ' development of an expanded concept of art , which began in his drawings in the 1950s. In a distant and ironic way, he celebrates the ritual of “explaining art” through his de facto (for the audience) silent action.

The relationship between thinking, speaking and creating was also characteristic of Beuys in this action: In his last speech, Sprechen über Deutschland (1985), he emphasized that he was actually a person of the word. Elsewhere he says: “ When I speak (…) I try to introduce the impulses of this force that flow from a fuller concept of language, which is the spiritual concept of development. “(Quoted from the book by Martin Müller, see below). This inclusion of language and speech in the pictorial works is clearly expressed in How to explain the pictures to the dead rabbit .

The hare is an animal with centuries-old, comprehensive symbolic meaning in all religions: in Greek mythology it belongs to the goddess of love Aphrodite , in the Romans and Germanic peoples a symbol of fertility , a Christian symbol for resurrection (see also the article Hare in Art ). At Beuys it becomes a complex component of the performance that leaves room for interpretation. By counteracting the actual lively symbolic meaning with the dead rabbit, Beuys can for example be understood as a symbol for rebirth. This interpretation is also supported by the “mask” that Beuys wears during his performance: gold as an ancient symbol for purity, wisdom and the power of the sun, honey as a Germanic or Indian remedy for regeneration and revitalization.

“ For me, the rabbit is the symbol for the incarnation, because the rabbit makes real what a person can only think about. He digs himself in, he digs a burrow. He incarnates in the earth, and that alone is important. That's how it appears to me. With honey on my head, of course, I do something that has to do with thinking. The human ability is not to give up honey but to think, to give up ideas. Thereby the death character of the thought is brought back to life. Because honey is undoubtedly a living substance. Human thought can also be alive. But it can also be deadly in an intellectualizing way, also remain dead, express itself deadly, for example in the political sphere or in education. "

- Beuys

The human-rabbit relationship can also be viewed: “So I suspect that the dead rabbit is more likely to understand the meaning of art than so-called common sense. The human observer shows himself without any understanding, since he has always understood everything before he even looked properly, ie in the race with the rabbit he likes the role of the hedgehog. ” (Marcel Chromik).

With Dadaism , the actions of the Fluxus movement had transitoriness and chance in common; what was new was the inclusion of everyday actions, the person of the artist or the artist collective in the work of art as such.

The performance is considered a key work by Beuys. It was recreated again in 2005 by Marina Abramović in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York, in order to draw attention to its topicality for contemporary art as well. Christoph Schlingensief , who dealt intensively with Beuys' work for many years, integrated the performance in a strongly modified form into his plays Atta Atta (2003) and Attabambi-Pornoland (2004).

literature

  • Joseph Beuys, Speaking about Germany , 2002, ISBN 3-928780-14-X
  • Martin Müller, How to explain the pictures to the dead rabbit. Shamanism and knowledge in the work of Joseph Beuys. (Dissertation) VDG Weimar, 1994, ISBN 3-9803234-8-X
  • Cross sign. Religious foundations in the work of Joseph Beuys, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, 1985
  • Volker Harlan, Rainer Rappmann, Peter Schata: Soziale Plastik , 1984, ISBN 3-88103-012-3
  • Uwe M. Schneede: Joseph Beuys , 1994, ISBN 3-7757-0450-7

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Lieberknecht, 1971, quoted from Adriani / Konnertz / Thomas, 1984, p. 155; contrary to Beuys' explanation, rabbits do not dig or inhabit burrows (see HP Riegel : Beuys. Die Biographie . Aufbau, Berlin 2013, p. 230. ISBN 978-3-351-02764-3 )