Conceptual artist Joseph Beuys shown as laughing revolutionary in new documentary - and Germans didn’t get his jokes
Director of the only documentary feature vying for top prizes at Berlin film festival says to understand its subject you have to see how he lived life on the edge
A documentary about German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys wowed the audience at its world premiere in Berlin, depicting him as a creative wizard and provocative prankster who enjoyed challenging traditional thinking about art, politics and money.
The film by award-winning director Andres Veiel shows the contradictory path of a man who voluntarily joined the Hitler Youth and fought in the second world war, only to become one of Germany’s most experimental artists and a vocal proponent of self-determination and grassroots democracy.
“I was very interested in showing his wounds and trauma as being connected to his energy,” Veiel said in an interview on Wednesday. “You can only understand Beuys if you realise that [in life] he sped toward the abyss like a Stuka fighter just to pull up in the nick of time before the plane crashes and he hits the ground. It is this energy that kept him fighting in life.”
During wartime, Beuys indeed survived a fighter jet crash on the Crimean peninsula.
Based on archive footage, audio recordings, interviews and photos, the film sheds light on the question why sculptures like the fat chair were ridiculed in Germany but celebrated in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.