Edinburgh Festival: Beuys keeps swinging
Main Festival
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Your support makes all the difference.Joseph Beuys: Editions
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, to 19 Sep
IF JOSEPH Beuys were working today, he would be the People's Artist. Not only did he use the media as a vehicle for his ideas - he once waged a public war against Marcel Duchamp on TV, forcing the artist out of a long and deliberate silence - but his concept of "social sculpture" fits neatly with New Labour's nannyish ideals. Beuys felt that art was an inherent part of human existence, that we are all potentially creative, and our lives could and should be enriched by this realisation. For him, art was something you "achieved" rather than executed, actions became Actions and everyday objects became fraught with new meaning.
It is easy to get caught up in his passion. Beuys was a good-looking and intensely charismatic figure - qualities that would have put him at the top of the guest list for soirees at No 10. It is only without his fiery presence that you can really see the objects for what they are.
Editions comprises all the prints, photographs, drawings, postcards and objects that Beuys gathered between 1965 and his death in 1986. What you have is a collage of his life, a collection of memorabilia that signifies different chapters: photos of student rallies, magazine cuttings, posters advertising his shows, and even his last will and testament. Granted, by viewing them in such a way these objects have a certain worth. But these things are in all our houses. What if we gathered our belongings together for the world to take a look?
This is to highlight the flaws in Beuys' vision. In practical terms there is not enough room for us all to indulge our creative energies in this way, and who would care anyway? The owner of such objects has to have a certain amount of celebrity for them be interesting. It's fine if, like Beuys, you are on back-slapping terms with Andy Warhol. You may have the feeling that you are poking through someone's belongings in Editions, but what you have at the end of the show is a pretty good idea of Beuys's media lifestyle.
The banality of some of the objects are engaging, though. Some appear collected in the way a child hoards peculiar trinkets - a sachet of sugar, a pair of tin cans joined by string, a piece of wrapping paper. But others refer to experiences which are undoubtedly extraordinary. Sled is rooted in a wartime experience in Russia in which Beuys was brought back to life by nomadic Tartars who rubbed butter into his body and wrapped him in felt to keep him warm. Like a child packs a knapsack of vitals before embarking on a playtime adventure, Beuys takes fat and felt in order to survive.
With such tales to tell, Editions is a fascinating record of an extraordinary existence. Just don't expect our lives to be as interesting.
Fiona Sturges
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