Art as Social Practice: Notes on Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986)

• German performance artist, sculptor, installation artists, graphic artist, art theorist, and teacher
• His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy, and anthroposophy; it culminates in his “extended definition of art” and the idea of ‘social sculpture’ as a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics.
• His career was characterized by passionate, even acrimonious public debate, but he is now regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

In 1964, as part of a festival of new art coinciding with the 20th anniversary of an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, Beuys created a performance or Aktion. The performance was interrupted by a group of students, one of whom attacked Beuys, punching him in the face. A photograph of the artist, nose bloodied and arm raised, was circulated in the media.
Beuys produced an idiosyncratic CV, which he titled Lebenslauf/Werklauf (Life Course/Work Course). The document was a self-consciously fictionalized account of the artist’s life, in which historical events mingle with metaphorical and mythical speech (he refers to his birth as the Exhibition of a Wound, and he claims his Ulysses Extension to have been carried out “at James Joyce’s request” (impossible, given that the writer was by 1961 long-dead). This document marks a blurring of fact and fiction that was to be characteristic of Beuys' self-created persona, as well as the source of much controversy.
Beuys enacted his political and philosophical ideas by abolishing entry requirements to his class in Düsseldorf. Throughout the late 1960s this renegade policy caused great institutional friction, which came to a head in October 1972 when Beuys was dismissed from his post. The dismissal, which Beuys refused to accept, produced a wave of protests from students, artists and critics.
Beuys continued an intense schedule of public lectures and discussions, as well as becoming increasingly active in German politics. Despite this dismissal, the walkway on the academy's side of the Rhine bears Beuys as its namesake.

Beuys did not only write, talk, and act upon his political beliefs, he found ways to enter mainstream politics in Germany and internationally.

Amongst other things, Beuys founded (or co-founded) the following political organizations: German Student Party (1967), Organization for Direct Democracy Through Referendum (1971), Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (1974), and German Green Party (1980).
Beuys became a pacifist, was a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons and campaigned strenuously for environmental causes.
He was elected Green Party candidate for the European Parliament.

It was during the 1960s that Beuys formulated his central theoretical concepts concerning the social, cultural and political function and potential of art. Beuys was motivated by a utopian belief in the power of universal human creativity and the potential for art to bring about revolutionary change. This translated into Beuys’s concept of ‘social sculpture’ in which society as a whole was to be regarded as one great work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) to which each person can contribute creatively.

In 1973, Beuys wrote:
“Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.”

Photodocumentation of...

"How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" (performance, 1965)



"I Like America and America Likes Me" (performance, 1974)



7,000 Oaks Project:

“My point with these seven thousand trees was that each would be a monument, consisting of a living part, the live tree, changing all the time, and a crystalline mass, maintaining its shape, size, and weight. This stone can be transformed only by taking from it, when a piece splinters off, say, never by growing. By placing these two objects side by side, the proportionality of the monument's two parts will never be the same.” – Beuys



Beuys became a famous iconoclast by turning political fights into art. His exhibitions frequently included documentation of his environmental activism, and he often involved his students in his work.

Beuys developed a fundamental message from his art practice: Everyone is an artist.

But he wasn’t the only one making what he called “social sculpture,” social interventions as art…
The 1960’s and 70’s brought ‘Be-Ins’, ‘Love-Ins’ and ‘Happenings’. Though associated with the hippie movement, these were really social phenomena that were interchangeable with the art practices of people like Beuys and others… Jim Dine, Yoko Ono, Daniel Spoerri, Alan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and many others.