Cliff Gorman - Man and Beuys: his talk and action
| Place: | WorthAttention |
| Start date: | Thursday 22, January 2009 |
| End date: | Thursday 22, January 2009 |
| Times: | 19:45 - 21:00 |
| Price: | Tickets: £4.00 |
This will be an illustrated introductory talk on Joseph Beuys, the man, his art and his world view.
Beuys became one of the most influential and famous artists back in the 1980's. Today his ideas still have the power to create waves. He was prolific in many areas. He 
was not afraid to mix art and politics - although he said that he 'knew only art'. Indeed, he was a founder member of the German Green Party, an environmental artist and campaigner. His statement 'Everyone an Artist' (meaning everyone is creative in their own way) encapsulates the importance he gave to art. He wanted to expand the very notion of art. He believed that his teaching was his most important art. His dismissal as Professor of Sculpture at Dusseldorf Academy of Art created international waves of protest. An open letter of protest was signed by leading artists, including David Hockney, Jim Dine and Richard Hamilton. Although the dismissal has been immortalised in the multiple 'Democracy is Merry', which shows a smiling Beuys being marched through a line 
of German Police at the exit of the Academy, his wife is quoted as saying that she had never seen Beuys so sad as on the day of his dismissal.
From the age of about 25, Beuys began to study the works of Rudolf Steiner and became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1973, when he was 52. Some argue that all his art was influenced by Rudolf Steiner. Certainly his use of blackboard drawings shows a close resemblance to those of Rudolf Steiner.
Beuys, in a letter to Manfred Schradi, writes particularly about Rudolf Steiner's ideas that relate the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity to culture, polical rights and economics respectively. 'I know that he (that is Rudolf Steiner) has left me the mission to sweep away gradually, in my own way, the alienation and distrust people have towards the supersensible. In polical thinking, the field in which I have worked daily, it is a case of bringing about the reality of threefoldness as soon as possible'.
