Myths like Joseph Bueys

Joseph Beuys said he was saved by a group of nomads known as ‘Tartars’ after his plane was shot down over Crimea during World War II.

He said that they wrapped his broken body in felt and fat to keep him warm and alive.

He said that this is why he chose to use those materials in his art.

There is zero proof that any of this took place.

But it doesn’t matter.

He wore the same felt hat every day, and he used fat, felt, copper, honey repeatedly throughout his career.

Every piece he created became part of the myth, and every piece strengthened the meaning behind the myth, and his resolve to keep it alive.

His entire body of work was in response to one simple and finite belief:

Everyone is an artist.

Not in the sense that everyone literally makes art, or should make art, but that creativity itself is a human energy, and an energy that everyone possesses.

The act of shaping the world, politically, socially or spiritually is a form of sculpture.

Bueys called it “social sculpture” and treated every speech, action, and encounter as part of that invisible artwork.

He planted trees and called it sculpture.
He lectured with chalkboards and called it performance.
He spent three days in a gallery with a wild coyote and called it “healing.”

It’s all about finding the meaning in the myth.

The felt wasn’t just insulation, it stood for protection.
The fat wasn’t just fat, it stood for energy, transformation, memory.
The hat, the cane, the on his body were ritualistic symbols.

They gave his life coherence, even when the world didn’t.

Ideology without meaningful myth can rapidly become cold, mechanized, weaponized belief systems that are liable to flatten and destroy culture. This is a man who fought for the Nazis as a teenager, who watched his country ravaged by hate and nationalism.

So he turned to soft materials, soft symbols, soft power. And yet despite this interest in softness, his presence was anything but. He was solemn, magnetic, devout – German.

A serious artist who didn’t paint beauty, but he did offer the substance of belief.

The belief in art as a living force.
In ideas as materials.
Actions as sculpture.

He talked more than he sculpted in the traditional sense. He planted more trees than he painted canvases in the traditional sense.

He existed as a living performance piece – the myth of Joseph Beuys.

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Jonathan ✌️

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