show your wound
| show your wound |
|---|
| Joseph Beuys , 1974–1975, 1980 |
| installation |
| Lenbachhaus, Munich
Link to the picture |
show your wound (1974–1975) is an installation or environment by the German artist Joseph Beuys from 1976, which is now in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.
The work
The environment itself consists of a large, clinical-looking room in which there are five objects that appear twice:
- The main object of the installation, consisting of two corpse stretchers ("beds") from the pathology department , above two boxes made of galvanized sheet iron with glass panes, which are coated with grease on the inside, called "lamps" ; under the stretchers two zinc-sheet boxes filled with grease, each containing a clinical thermometer and a test tube with a bird's skull, next to each a mason jar covered with gauze .
- Two black school boards, inscribed in chalk by Beuys: “show your wound”.
- Two tools ( Schepser ) made of forged iron with wooden handles leaning on two white wooden boards.
- Two standard symbols ( forks made of forged iron with a wooden handle with cloth flaps) with which Beuys had scratched two semicircles on the slate on which the forks are.
- Two editions of the left-leaning Italian newspaper Lotta Continua, framed in white painted wooden boxes (German: the endless fight , or the fight goes on).
history
The work was exhibited in 1976 by Beuys in collaboration with Galerie Schellmann & Klüser in the Kunstforum, today Maximiliansforum , an exhibition space in the Maximilianstrasse pedestrian underpass that has been used by various exhibitors since 1973 under the management of the Lenbachhaus . The work initially met with little response. The photographer Ute Klophaus took some pictures of the original installation, which was dismantled and stored again after a few weeks. In 1979, show your wound was bought by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus for 270,000 DM and installed there by Beuys on January 22nd and 23rd, 1980. The planned purchase was very controversial and, like many other works by the artist, sparked fierce criticism and nationwide protests. In the polemics of public voices, the work was called “the most expensive bulky waste of all time”.
Beuys later also used Ute Klophaus' photographs of this installation in a multiple .
reception
The tabloids headlined the time pejorative: "The man with the hat shows his wounds." The feature articles referred to him as the “man of pain in art” and addressed less the work itself than the biography of the artist, according to which he himself had suffered wounds during the war.
interpretation
show your wound is an installation that essentially focuses on therapy and healing, as well as a modern memento mori that refers to illness, weakness, old age and mortality. Beuys viewed the room as a “sick room” in which the viewer is confronted with his own transience by revealing “his wound” and at the same time experiencing healing.
The artist explained about his installation: “Show your wound because you have to reveal the disease that you want to heal. The space [...] speaks of the sickness of society. [...] A dynamic decision-making situation is shown. ”The work of art does not stop at the wound; it also contains “hints that rigor mortis can be overcome [...]. [E] something is laid out that, if you listen carefully, shows a way out. "
literature
- Joseph Beuys: show your wound. 2 volumes. Schellmann & Klüser, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921629-22-5 (Volume 2 = reactions ).
- Gabriele Fecher: Joseph Beuys “Show your wound”. Attempt to get closer in the context of adult education. Pedagogical office of the German Adult Education Association, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 978-3-88513-078-9 .
Web links
- Evelyn Vogel: A stretcher for art. 40 years after Beuys first set up 'show your wound', artists in the same place respond to it. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 10, 2016
- Film Show Your Wound - Art and Spirituality with Joseph Beuys , by Rüdiger Sünner , 2015, DVD, Absolut Medien
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christoph Wiedemann: Underground Adieu. Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010, accessed on January 10, 2017 .
- ↑ Evelyn Vogel: A stretcher for art , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 10, 2016, p. 37.
- ↑ Capital : The Capital Art Compass 2004: The Immortals ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). October 28, 2004
- ↑ Abendzeitung , February 13, 1976; see. also Bayerische Staatszeitung , October 26, 1976; Münchner Merkur , January 28, 1980; all in: Beuys 1980, Vol. 2, o. p.
- ↑ Jost Herbig : Things have their language. Interview with Josph Beuys. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26./27. January 1980.