PRESENTATION: Beuys & Duchamp. Artists of the Future

With the exhibition “Beuys & Duchamp. Artists of the Future” is the first ever juxtaposition of works by Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld are taking a fresh look at two protagonists of the twentieth century, both of whom radically changed the concept of art. Joseph Beuys repeatedly referred to the work of his “challenger” Marcel Duchamp, as in 1964 in the famous action “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Archive

The exhibition “Beuys & Duchamp. Artists of the Future”  takes as its starting point the question as to what was so important about Marcel Duchamp for Joseph Beuys, who mentioned no other artist more often in interviews and who seems to have seen him as a challenge for his own concepts.  Starting with one of the last room ensembles installed by Beuys himself in the museum in his native city of Krefeld, the exhibition with 1 50 international loans reveals the cosmos of the two pioneering artists and their dynamic relationship to each other.  Duchamp, the ironic skeptic, and Beuys, the society-changing visionary – although these charismatic artistic personalities shaped the art of the twentieth century as quasi antagonists, the references and connections between them reach much deeper and, despite all their differences, reveal a multitude of affinities. The forward-looking potential of their respective radical and interdisciplinary strategies will be reexamined from a contemporary perspective. The dialog between the two protagonists in particular raises fundamental questions about the role of art in everyday life and society. Both artists are closely linked with Kunstmuseen Krefeld. The first solo exhibition of Marcel Duchamp in a German museum took place in Haus Lange in 1965. The Kunstmuseen Krefeld can thus be considered one of the places that contributed to Duchamp’s discovery in Germany in the 1960s. During this period, Duchamp became a pioneer of new trends and a source of inspiration for a younger generation of artists in the United States and Europe. With his “ready-mades,” which he began conceiving in 1913, he had elevated serially prefabricated, everyday objects such as bottle dryers, urinals, and coat hooks to artistic objects, thus revolutionizing art and its reception. When Duchamp’s work was almost completed in 1965, Beuys was at the beginning of his intensified work in the public sphere. The legendary action “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated” (1964) is one of Beuys’s numerous artistic confrontations with the “father figure” Duchamp. The title already speaks of Beuys’s ambivalent relationship to Duchamp, the master of staged skepticism and ironic distance. Whereas Duchamp rarely expressed himself publicly and not at all politically, Beuys invoked the power of art to transform society. In addition to the obvious contrasts in their respective works, attitudes, and personalities, the exhibition focuses on the affinities in terms of motifs and artistic strategies. “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated” (1964) was broadcast live on 11/12/1964 as part of the series Die Drehscheibe in the state studio of North Rhine-Westphalia of the Second German Television in Düsseldorf.  Beuys’ action was part of a Fluxus demonstration under the title Fluxus Group , which included a total of three actions. The other two participants were Bazon Brock with “Agit Pop” and Wolf Vostell with “Dé-coll / age Happening”. Before the start of the action, a shed was set up in the studio. Joseph Beuys entered the field of action and pulled a felt blanket with him. He sat down, took individual packs from a margarine carton and stacked them. Lying and crawling, he formed a fat corner in the inner corner of the shed , with this process being the focus of the action. He also smeared grease on the felt blanket he had brought with him and rang a bell. Then he painted the words “THE SILENCE OF MARCEL DUCHAMP IS OVERVALUED” in capital letters with his brown cross paint on a square plate. Beuys also covered the plate with whole bars of chocolate. Beuys also lengthened a walking stick with fat at both ends. The action could have been triggered by a debate on the question of “whether one should join the Duchamp tradition under the rubrum Neo-Dada”.  This debate was led in the mid-1960s by artists who were close to the Fluxus movement or who belonged to it. Uwe Schneede mentions the excerpt from the book “About Marcel Duchamp” by Robert Lebel , published in 1959 in Paris and 1962 in Cologne, as a specific point of reference for the campaign . It said that the artist could be politically and socially active or in the sense of Marcel Duchampfell into silence. This passage could have been a direct suggestion for the title and could be interpreted as a criticism of Duchamp’s concept of art, of his distancing himself from the art world and of his dedication to chess and writing. Both Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp understood art as a universal medium. They incorporated everyday objects into their work, dealt with the natural sciences in artistic experimental setups, staged their own person, and liberated artistic means from conventional boundaries and ideas. Inherent to both works is a radical potential for change. They challenge us to perceive everyday life and the environment differently and, in doing so, to redefine the role of the viewer.

Photo: Joseph Beuys, Barraque DʼDull Odde, 1961–1967, 2 workshop shelves with over 650 individual objects, worktop, 1 rubber blanket + 1 gutta-percha cloth on the wall, 3 wooden sculptures in front of the double rack, 290 × 400 × 90 cm, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, gift from the collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021, photo: Volker Döhne / Kunstmuseen Krefeld

Info: Magdalena Holzhey and Kornelia Rader in collaboration with Katharina Neuburger, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Joseph-Beuys-Platz 1, Krefeld, Germany, Duration: 8/10/2021-16/1/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://kunstmuseenkrefeld.de