BEUYS, Joseph

etched glass beaker with rose

13 3/4 x 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches

Rose fur direkte Demokratie etched in glassThis multiple derives from Josef Beuys Office for Direct Democracy through Referendum (ODD) installation at Documenta 5 (1972) and is typical of the Fluxus artists call for an engaged conceptual art practice that would break down clear-cut distinctions between established art discourse and the politics of everyday life. Beuys employed two parallel processes during this period, namely the creation of concrete artworks and action-performances on the one hand, and counter-institutional frameworksthe basis for free grass-roots public debate on social and ideological issues, particularly the dismantling of traditional party politicson the other. For Documenta, he transposed the Dseldorf office of ODDdesks, filing cabinets, blackboardsdirectly into the exhibition space, creating an information and educational center designed to critique and expand the institutional framework of the event itself. The office included two multiples: We wont do it without the rose, a photograph depicting Beuys didactically engaging with a Documenta visitor; and Rose for direct democracy, a single red rose in an etched, graduated chemistry beaker. The symbolic meaning of the latter is fairly clear, constructing a dialectical binary between passionate love and revolutionary socialism, art and science, bodily affect and empirical investigation. However, Beuys also saw the rose as symptomatic of an evolutionary progress toward a concrete revolutionary goal outside of conventional party hierarchies. (CHECK FILE FOR FULL TEXT0

1973

BEUYS, Joseph

German, 1921 - 1986

Gift of Gary H. Brown

1996.60