Beuys Will Be Beuys

If there’s one rule the critics have thoroughly mastered, it’s never to get caught off base by denigrating an artist who, for whatever reason, has managed to attract the favorable attention of any self-proclaimed avant garde group. Fearing to be labeled as reactionary or, worse, conservative, they either hedge their bets or, more often, couch their analyses in phrases so euphuistic that a reader is hard put to discover their real opinion, if any. A classic case in point was the recent exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys, a West German artist, at the Guggenheim Museum. Beuys has made big waves abroad, especially in his homeland, where his “performances” —lecturing about art to a dead rabbit, clashing cymbals in time to a horse munching hay, and other Dadaist manifestations—have won him great renown and where his “Organization for Direct Democracy,” a by-product of his quarrels with the Düsseldorf Academy, has made him a hero of the far Left. Obviously, then, his first museum appearance here was an event of some importance.

On the other hand, the display, which consisted chiefly of examples of what the artist calls “social sculpture”—mainly found objects (a tin bathtub, a piano, pieces of worn metal, mouldering sausages) wrapped in felt or embellished with mounds of fat, mud, and sticking plaster—was not, to put it charitably, very edifying. The critics, however, did not let this stop them; on the contrary, its very obfuscation seemed to stimulate their love of hyperbole.

RB

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Ruth Berenson

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If there’s one rule the critics have thoroughly mastered, it’s never to get caught off base by denigrating an artist who, for whatever reason, has managed to attract the favorable attention of any self-proclaimed avant garde group. Fearing to be labeled as reactionary or, worse, conservative, they either hedge their bets or, more often, couch their analyses in phrases so euphuistic that a reader is hard put to discover their real opinion, if any. A classic case in point was the recent exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys, a West German artist, at the Guggenheim Museum. Beuys has made big waves abroad, especially in his homeland, where his “performances” —lecturing about art to a dead rabbit, clashing cymbals in time to a horse munching hay, and other Dadaist manifestations—have won him great renown and where his “Organization for Direct Democracy,” a by-product of his quarrels with the Düsseldorf Academy, has made him a hero of the far Left. Obviously, then, his first museum appearance here was an event of some importance.

On the other hand, the display, which consisted chiefly of examples of what the artist calls “social sculpture”—mainly found objects (a tin bathtub, a piano, pieces of worn metal, mouldering sausages) wrapped in felt or embellished with mounds of fat, mud, and sticking plaster—was not, to put it charitably, very edifying. The critics, however, did not let this stop them; on the contrary, its very obfuscation seemed to stimulate their love of hyperbole.