Just who was Joseph Beuys?

Echoes of a Prayer
Joseph Beuys and Japan in 1984

Mizuki Takahashi

Preface

When Joseph Beuys agreed to come to Japan to hold a solo exhibition at the Seibu
Museum of Art, he stipulated two conditions: that Seibu provide material support to
"7,000 Oaks," one of his major projects at the time, and that he be given the chance to
hold an open dialogue with Japanese students. Since the 1970s, the Japanese had been
introduced to Beuys and his activities through various magazine articles, and when he
arrived at Narita Airport there was a large contingent of fans there to meet him. Tickets
for his lecture sold out, and at the lecture's conclusion a crowd of autograph-seekers
formed around him.
However, at this very time Japan was heading full speed into the period that later
became known as the economic bubble, so Beuys' various theses – an "extended
definition of art," "social sculpture," "every human being is an artist," "human
imagination is the true capital" – were seen as being remote from reality. Now, a quarter
of a century later, with the global economy in a state of crisis, the time has come to
reevaluate the message that Joseph Beuys dedicated his life to conveying.

Bringing art back to everyday life

When Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) exhibited a men's urinal under the title Fountain
and signed it "R. Mutt," he exposed the process by which an "object" could become an
"artwork." Several decades later, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) began mass-producing
silkscreen prints of Campbell's soup cans and celebrities at a studio he called "the
factory." He thus questioned the nature of the border separating an original from a copy
– high art from popular culture. If so, then what was it that Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)
achieved? If Duchamp and Warhol undermined the notions of concept and value within
the context of art, it was Beuys who made the next move.
Beuys once said that "there is nothing beautiful about making a beautiful work of art."
(1) Art, as far as he was concerned, was the notion of each of us applying our own
creativity to the formation and betterment of society. That is why "anyone" who pulled
their weight was, in his mind, an artist. In other words, it was Beuys' desire to return
art – which Modernism had made the exclusive domain of artists, curators, gallerists
and art critics – to the everyday lives of the people. The difficulty of Beuys's art is that
this attempt is not necessarily apparent in the "objects" that constituted his artworks.
For example, the American curator Mark Rosenthal has said that Joseph Beuys was a
comparable figure to his contemporaries John Lennon and Bob Dylan. (2) What made
those two so charismatic was not just their music (artworks), but the fact that people
found their messages and the attitudes they displayed towards society appealing.
Beuys’ charisma is the same. His "artworks" were evidence of something larger: his
stance and his beliefs. That is why any attempt to understand his artworks must start
with an understanding of his life. (3)
Joseph Beuys was born in 1921 in the town of Krefeld in central western Germany.
During the Second World War, he joined the Luftwaffe as a radio operator (and later
became a gunner in a dive-bomber). In 1944 his plane was shot down by Soviet forces
over the Crimean Peninsula. Having been left incapacitated by the crash, Beuys was
rescued by indigenous Tatar tribesmen. In order to keep him warm, they covered his
body in animal fat and wrapped him in felt. Apparently, it was because his skin was
able to absorb nutrients from fat that his life was saved.
After the Second World War, Beuys studied sculpture at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine
Arts and, after graduating, started working as an artist. In 1961, at the age of 40, he
became a professor at his alma mater. After meeting with Nam June Paik (1932-2006)
and George Maciunas (1931-1978), he collaborated with those two to form the Fluxus
group, and from 1963 he began holding performances, or, as he called them, "Aktion"
(actions), in earnest. The various props and objects used in those performances would
eventually be put in glass cases and given second lives as works of art.
From the second half of the 1960s through the early 1970s, Beuys came into conflict
with the academy administration over his abolition of entry requirements for his class,
and his employment was eventually ceased. From this period until the end of his life,
Beuys's activities gradually took on the nature of social activism. He established the
citizens’ activist group, "Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendum," and
joined with the literary figure Heinrich Böll to establish the "Free International
University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research." He also participated in the
first meeting to establish the German Green Party, which went on to campaign on the
platforms of protecting the environment and banning nuclear weapons. Beuys designed
a poster for the party and even stood as one of its candidates for the European
parliament. Art and politics: If you think about the role that art played as a form of
propaganda during the war, it is natural that any attempt to bring them together would
occasion feelings of apprehension and suspicion. But for Beuys, who proposed the
concept of society-as-sculpture, whereby human creativity would be harnessed to shape
a world and society for the future, politics was just one aspect of art. In fact, he believed
that instead of concentrating on their own works alone, artists should actively seek out
points of connection with society in general.

A strange "something" that makes Beuys' works transcend the category of

art

Among Beuys’s artworks is one called Lebenslauf/Werklauf (Life Course/Work Course)

that he first presented in 1964. In it, Beuys combined two notions: the first, which was
obviously false, was that at the age of eight he had held an exhibition in front of
Genghis Kahn's tomb; the second, which was obviously true, was that in 1961 he had
become a professor at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. In other words, Beuys tried
deliberately to make his own life the subject of an artwork. For him, art was equivalent
to his own life, and the complexity and difficulty of his work serves to remind us of the
fact that human life is itself full of complexities and mysteries. Beuys' ambivalence
towards truthfulness in his actions and statements, such as in Lebenslauf/Werklauf,
was not considered too seriously in his home country, but it appears to have influenced
his reception abroad.
For example, the American critic Benjamin Buchloh is critical of Beuys' voluntary entry
into the Nazi-controlled Luftwaffe and his participation in the war, even if those actions
were not related directly to his art. Buchloh also questions the truth of the claim that
Beuys was rescued by Tatars. (4) Dirk Luckow points out that in 1960s America, Beuys'
reception was tempered by the fact that many people pointed out his membership of the
Hitler Youth, his history as a soldier (5), the fact that shadows of 1920s and 1930s
German romantic nationalism could be detected in his discourses on human
transformation and evolution, and that his work betrayed the influence of national
socialist mysticism and traces of the thinking of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Luckow
also points out that this was because the image of Germany in the United States was
still colored by memories of the Second World War. Even in 1969, when Beuys had
established himself in his own country, Luckow says, he was largely ignored in the
United States, which was still obsessed with what it perceived as the superiority of its
own art. (6) In other words, in America criticism was being made about Beuys'
ideological roots and the education that he received as a youth in Germany and he was
being denounced for his participation in an aggressor army. (7)
The first person to introduce Beuys' work in Japan was the critic Ichiro Haryu. In the
January 1970 edition of art magazine Bijutsu Techo he devoted 29 pages to an
illustrated description of Beuys' works and actions (he called them "happenings"), the
connection between Beuys's wartime experiences and his art, and his involvement with
politics.

"It is beyond doubt that Beuys's memories of the army, the POW camp, Luftwaffe
paraphernalia and so on have deeply affected his psychology. The fear that
humans go through in war is one of the themes of his work… His experience of
war was undoubtedly one of near-death, one of fear of circumstances that were
beyond his control… It is because Beuys's works are deeply penetrated with the
awareness of life to the point of death that he tries to investigate the immutable
characteristics of human nature and he never ceases to demand fortitude from his
viewers. (8)

"I can't stop reminding myself that in spite of the fact that he addresses the pain
and fear arising from the contradictions of humanity, he never once resigns
himself to despair or unease." (9)

The fact that Haryu sees Beuys as neither the aggressor nor the victim is perhaps
because Haryu is aware that he himself would be seen as an aggressor from victim
countries, and yet, as someone who was made to participate in war, he was also a victim.
This wide discrepancy between the way that Beuys' wartime experiences were viewed in
the United States and in Japan is something that Nam June Paik has pointed out.

"If you were to explain it in Japanese terms, then it is difficult to deny that
empathy among the wartime generation was one factor in Beuys' wide-ranging
popularity. Beuys's history in the Luftwaffe is the reason why he is criticized by
left wing commentators. To be in the Luftwaffe, you didn't have to be a member of
the Nazi Party, but, as with every air force in the world, it was voluntary. One
left-wing student in New York doggedly questioned him on this point. 'Why did
you volunteer to join the Luftwaffe?' Beuys ignored his interpreter and answered
 in English:
"'During the war, I was a senior student at Staatliches Gymnasium Cleve (under
the old system of schooling). One by one, my friends volunteered and one by one
they died. After a while it was pretty much just me left in the class. I began to feel
sorry that I was alive. It was because of this sense of comradeship that I
volunteered.'" (10)

"Beuys was born in 1921. If he had been born five years earlier, or if he had joined
the Spanish civil war out of the same romantic feeling of comradeship then he
might have died. If he had been born in a large city such as Berlin then he might
have become a Marxist and died young fighting the Nazis. But for Beuys, who was
born in a remote rural town on the border with the Netherlands and whose mother
made nice soup and whose father sold agricultural tools, the bourgeois notions of
peace and Marxism were completely foreign. He skillfully negotiated the
tight-rope that was the circumstances of his birth. Even though he almost died
twice because of heart trouble, he almost never took a holiday, he believed in his
own fate, he never employed a secretary, he answered all his own phone calls and,
generally speaking, he approached each day with the conviction that he was living
on borrowed time. His fate, he believed, was in the hands of the gods. (11)

In 1971 the critic Yoshiaki Tono made a report of a Beuys solo exhibition that was being
held in Stockholm. He clearly tried to resist the temptation to allow his knowledge of
Beuys' life to affect his interpretation of the artworks. Nevertheless, he concludes by
saying that Beuys' artworks transcend the category of "art."

"What you come to feel after repeated viewings of Beuys' objects is that you can
detect in them traces of violence, like the smoke from a gun. I am sure this is one
of the things that makes his works so heavy, so elusive. They are not simply
actions or coincidences as forms of artistic production. Nor are they objects as
methods for gauging awareness – as with the Surrealists. They do not simply
address issues of aesthetics, but have a more contemporary element, or rather,
they are more about humans themselves. I feel they are connected deeply with the
problems of fatalistic evil or absolute death. Of course, the limitations of such a
literary (?) approach are clear, and his works should probably be approached
simply as pieces of art. However, it is a fact that the more you come into contact
with them, the more you realize that there is something fundamentally different
 about them, something else that means they cannot simply be described as works
of art." (12)

Beuys' visit to Japan twice postponed

Fumio Nanjo (current director of the Mori Art Museum), who was working at the Japan
Foundation in 1982, doesn't hide his annoyance when describing the circumstances in
Japan at the time of Beuys' visit. He had heard a rumor from a friend in Dusseldorf
about an artist who attracted students like some kind of cult leader, and in 1977 he saw
Beuys' works at Documenta 6. The more Nanjo heard about Beuys from people in the
art world overseas, the more he wondered why "someone who was given so much
attention abroad was not treated in the same way in Japan. I thought the gap in
information was odd... I wondered what it meant that you could have the artist who was
getting the most attention in Europe without that being reflected in Japan at all." (13)
Nevertheless, ever since 1970, Beuys' name had appeared occasionally in Bijutsu Techo,
so he must have had a limited following, at least. (14) Still, while there was a degree of
discourse being conducted on Beuys in the pages of specialist art magazines, his works
had never been introduced in a Japanese museum on any significant scale and Beuys
himself had never come to Japan. Consequently, there had been no chance to see his
works or the man and no exhibition at which the Japanese could judge his merits for
themselves.
Hence Nanjo was right to notice the gap that existed between Europe and Japan. And,
in order to bridge that gap, he set his mind to bringing Beuys to Japan.
The chance of a Beuys visit suddenly became a reality in 1982, when the Japan
Foundation held their exhibition "Thoughts and Action." (15) It was planned for Beuys to
be in Japan on November 27 and 28 of that year and for him to hold a lecture and a
debate. Nanjo says that, as the exhibition organizer, he had to arrange for a venue, but
it was difficult to do so because Beuys was still not well known. Eventually a venue was
found and the tickets for both events sold out in two days. However, just before Beuys
was due to make his trip, he postponed it until March 1983, citing poor health. Come
March, however, and Beuys again said he wanted to postpone. (16) Ironically, the fact
that Beuys twice cancelled trips to Japan actually served to strengthen his charisma
and the air of mystery surrounding him in this country.
It was after the controversy of these two postponements that a Beuys trip to Japan was
finally realized in early summer of 1984. (17) A solo show was held for him at Seibu
Museum of Art from June 2 till July 2 of that year. The Seibu Museum of Art, which had
opened in 1975, was unlike other museums of the day, having showcased at its opening
exhibition not crowd-pleasing Modern art or Western masterpieces, but an exhibition
called "A View of Japanese Contemporary Art." (18) After that, it presented a mixed
selection of exhibitions featuring design, architecture, ancient artifacts and
Impressionism, along with solo shows by contemporary artists such as Jasper Johns
and Shusaku Arakawa. It was very unusual among the several department store
museums that existed at the time. Akira Moriguchi, who curated the Beuys exhibition,
has written about his motivation for holding the show as follows.

"About a decade had passed since the museum opened (in 1975) and it had become
reasonably established. It was also the time when we were faced with the task of
distinguishing our exhibitions from the kinds of events that were normally held at
department stores. At the same time it was an issue for me personally – I had been
the chief of the curatorial department since we opened. I believed that it was time to
make a clear statement, both within the company and outside, in the public, about
the direction that we were headed as a museum." (19)

"At a time when there were a lot of exhibitions that said they wanted to be 'anti-art'
but seldom did so in more than words. I wanted to work with a super artist of an age
when we were seeking out a common language in the universal realm." (20)

And so, on May 28, 1984, Joseph Beuys finally arrived in Japan for his solo show.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he came for something else altogether:
"7,000 Oaks." (21) It was on the condition that Seibu contribute 500 oak trees to the
project (the equivalent at the time of 250,000 deutschmarks, or ¥20 million) that he
agreed to come. Since 1979, when he had held a retrospective at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York, Beuys had sworn off museum exhibitions because he didn’t think
they were an effective way to convey his idea of "social sculpture."

Beuys and the Japan of 1984

What kind of a world were we living in when Beuys arrived in 1984? As was seen in the
Soviet boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics that year, the Cold War was still well and
truly underway. In fact, just one year previous American president Ronald Reagan had
dismissed the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" as he publicly announced the so-called
"Star Wars plan" as part of the American defense strategy. Apple Computer Inc. (now
Apple Inc.) began selling its home computer, the Macintosh, and in the music world
Michael Jackson won a Grammy Award for his album, "Thriller." In addition to the
music, Jackson’s album won plaudits for its video, too, which was made in the style of a
horror movie, and ushered in the age when music and video, two separate media until
then, would be mixed. Domestically, it was the year that the privatization of the
national railways was set in motion, during Yasuhiro Nakasone's second term as prime
minister.
In writing about Haruki Murakami’s novel, 1Q84 (22), the critic Akio Nakamata
described the mood of the day as follows.

"1984: it was a time when Haruki Murakami was still an up-and-coming writer. It
was a time when pop culture still retained the light-footedness that it lost when it
was eventually tamed by capitalism. It was a time when magazines were far more
attractive than they are now, when reading a book or listening to music was still
enough to inspire courage, knowledge and peace of mind. More than anything, it
was a time when each of us had our own dissatisfactions with the present state of
affairs and we also each had what we now know was a completely unfounded
optimism that things would improve in the future." (23)

"If you think about it in that way, then for a lot of people a quarter of a century ago,
1984, meant the first step on the path that leads to the present. It was at that time
that Japanese society really became a society of 'mass consumption' – an
'information society.' 1984 was the time that Japan got caught up in the wave of
'globalization.'
"Of course, all of these changes could also be called aspects of postmodernization."
(24)

Akira Asada's second book, Tosoron: Sukizo Kizzu no Boken (A theory of escape: the
adventures of the schizo kids), which was published in 1984 begins like this:

"The boys escaped. From their homes, or their women. Either way, it's just
fabulous, isn't it? If you, women and children, have the time to come up with
doomed schemes to stop them, then you'd be better off just escaping now, rather
than being left behind. Who cares where to? Just escape! Escape! To wherever.
 "Don't underestimate this change. It's not a temporary phenomenon, or a local one.
No, it's just one manifestation of a major trend that is piercing every facet of the
age." (25)

It was in the middle of all this that Beuys landed at Narita airport. He was 63 years of
age. Ever since he had suffered a myocardial infarction in 1975, he had been in poor
health. But still he found time between his exhibitions and lectures and debates and
actions to come to Japan. And in Japan, too, during eight days from May 29 till June 5,
he negotiated quite a tight schedule.
He began by heading straight from Narita Airport to a press conference at his hotel. The
following day he visited the workshop where some alterations were being made to one of
his new works. He then checked the exhibition venue, held a lecture on "Art and
Politics" in the evening and conducted the impromptu "action" of trying to shake as
many of the audience members' hands as possible. On his third day he conducted the
final check of the exhibition that was due to open the following day, and late that night
he worked on nine blackboard works at Gallery Watari (now the Watari-um: Watari
Museum of Contemporary Art) with Nam June Paik. Then, on the evening of June 1,
"Joseph Beuys Exhibition" opened. On the morning of the following day, Beuys held an
open discussion with students from Tokyo University of the Arts and in the evening he
held an "action" with Nam June Paik titled "Nidai no Piano no Tame no Pafo-mansu" (A
performance for two pianos; it was later renamed Coyote III) at the Sogetsu Hall. And,
after an hour-long performance – during much of which Beuys was howling like a coyote
– he took questions from the audience. After that came interviews from magazines and
a press conference in rapid succession. On June 5, Beuys strolled in Koishikawa
Korakuen Gardens and with that respite his busy stay in Japan came to an end. Much
of Beuys' activities over those eight days were recorded by a film-making team from the
music shop WAVE, which was a part of the Seibu group and was at the time located in
Roppongi. Its members were Hideki Izumi, Tsunekazu Ishihara and Naoya
Hatakeyama. (26)
When Beuys arrived at Narita his fans welcomed him enthusiastically, but the majority
of newspaper and magazine articles that covered his trip were critical. (27)
For example, the artist Genpei Akasegawa said in a conversation with Yoshiaki Tono
and the photographer Shigeo Anzai that "it felt like I had seen something I wasn't
supposed to see" (28) and even admitted that he had walked out of the Sogetsu Hall
performance. The anthropologist Shinichi Nakazawa criticized Beuys for his "terrifying
lack of understanding" about Japan. Nakazawa wrote that Beuys arrived thinking the
Japanese were just "technologically advanced people going through rapid industrial
development" and he doubted that Beuys' view changed while he was here – despite the
fact that the Japanese were well equipped to relate to Beuys' work because they had
"maintained a sensibility similar to that of indigenous peoples such as Eskimos, African
tribes-people, or mountain tribes from South-East Asia." (29) The writer Hiroshi Unno
noted, "Before Beuys came I had no idea what he planned on doing here. And when he
arrived it turned out that he, as a man, was boring. What was interesting was what you
might call the 'Beuys phenomenon.'" "It turns out that Beuys himself is kind of empty,
but, while he was here he managed to function as a kind of mirror that reflected what
was around him." (30) Tono also made a similar observation (31), but the most devastating
critique came from the art magazine Geijutsu Shincho, which ran the headline, "Ah,
Beuys. It turns out he's just an ordinary guy." (32)
But before Beuys arrived in Japan he had given several indications that he knew he was
in for a cool reception. In a meeting with Moriguchi he said, "My way of thinking and my
theories as an artist are essentially European. Actually, they are not just European,
they are Europe itself. I don't think I will be totally misunderstood in Japan, I just don't
know the country so I can't imagine what will happen." (33) In an interview held just
before his visit, he said straightforwardly that he doesn't know if people will understand
his work in Japan and he doubts that they will get it straight away. "Also, my work is
probably different in nature to the kinds of things occupying the interests of the
Japanese now," he added. (34) Prior to his visit, Beuys believed that the archetypal
Japanese were the kind of men he saw in Dusseldorf, who wore suits and displayed no
interest in culture whatsoever. Ironically, that image really did match the consumer
society that Japanese was becoming, and such people did vastly outnumber those who
tried to understand his works and their messages.
In 2006, 22 years after Beuys's visit, the artist Yoshio Shirakawa summarized his
impressions as follows:

"In a country like Japan, where there isn't really any history or tradition of
Christianity, there are few occasions when Euro-American political or geopolitical
movements come across as really involving Asia. Instead, you only really see the
world through the frame of American political and economic policies… In this
context, Beuys' actions were not properly understood. The only model existing in
Japan by which Beuys could be interpreted was that of the 'society-conscious
artist' – in other words, his artwork would be compared with proletarian art or
socialist fantasy art from the prewar era. We have to have to be aware of this fact.
 "For that reason, you could say that in the blast furnace (of commercialism) that
was the mid-1980s, Japan was revisited by the dream of prewar proletarian art or
the conscience of the anti-art movement that arose during the heady days of
demonstrations against the security pact with the United States in the 1960s. We
must also question whether it was really possible for Japan at the time to see in
Beuys' art any more than the left wing elements of its message." (35)

"Within the blast furnace of the 1980s, Beuys' statement that 'I don't do modern
art' was simply not heard. What did stand out within that blast furnace were the
notions of Beuys being a genius, charismatic, a revolutionary, an artist-superstar."
(36)

"The Beuys phenomenon… was simply consumed by the media." (37)

"The reception of his work followed this kind of Japanese principle of

consumption." (38)

Adding weight to this view is the undeniable fact that while Beuys' visit to Japan
caused a great fuss, interest in him and his work disappeared almost as quickly as it
had come. However, even since his trip to Japan there have been opportunities to
discuss his work. In addition to the Japan branch of his Free International University
for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, which was established after his visit,
there was the collaborative research, "Geijutsu no Shakaisei – Yo-sefu Boisu kara no
Toei" (The social-ness of art – projections from Joseph Beuys), which was conducted by
Musashino Art University in 1993. (39) In 1996 the symposium, "Yo-sefu Boisu / Kansei
to Shakai" (Joseph Beuys / sensibility and society) was held at Keio University and its
content was compiled in a book. (40) Beuys has also been the focus of discussion in Aida,
the pamphlet produced by the Bijutsu to Bijutsukan no Aida o Kangaeru Kai (The
association for thinking about the space between art and art museums), and, in 1996, a
group of artists and critics held "Yo-sefu Boisu to 10-nen 'Kakucho Suru Bijutsukan –
Kakucho Suru Gakko'" (Joseph Beuys and ten years: 'the expanding art museum and
the expanding school').
For that reason, it seems a bit too easy to sum up Beuys' fate by saying that, in being
criticized by the media immediately after his visit, he was simply chewed up and spat
out by the very thing – the media – that caused his boom in the first place. Perhaps we
could say instead that Beuys fell through the gap between modernism and
postmodernism. In Tosoron, mentioned above, Akira Asada divides human beings into
those who tend towards paranoia – who try to integrate all the past – and those who
tend towards schizophrenia – who try to differentiate the circumstances of the present.
Those tending towards paranoia cling to things such as the "historical consistency of the
self" and hence carry the burden of trauma from the past. Asada suggests that a
massive conversion is happening in humans from paranoia-types to schizophrenia-types.
(41)

In Asada's terminology, Beuys was the quintessential paranoia-type: his past

experiences in the war cast a shadow over all his artistic activities and that trauma was
the driving force behind his catch cries of "social sculpture" and his "extended definition
of art." If so, then perhaps it was natural that Beuys, who carried with him principles,
doctrines, history – in other words, all the things the schizophrenia-types sought to
escape – would be forgotten by the masses?

Reinterpreting Beuys for the 21st century

Beuys died shortly after his visit to Japan, in 1986 – just a few years before the collapse
of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. It was after that time that the
neoliberalism of the 1980s propelled the world towards globalization. Then the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 occurred and the Iraq War. Since the onset of the 21st century, the world
has been faced with new problems, such as global warming, too.
In Japan, the bubble economy that began in 1986 burst in the early 1990s. As a result, a
large number of social problems have gone unaddressed – the problem of inequality
between metropolitan and rural areas, the problem of inequality of incomes, the
problem of employment – and new problems continue to arise today.
With regard to Japan's art world, there were a few artists who managed to carve out
careers for themselves both in Japan and abroad, while at the same time the collapse of
the bubble economy saw the closure of many department store museums. The Seibu
Museum of Art was no exception. After changing its name to the Sezon Museum of Art
and moving from the 12th floor to the first in 1989, it finally closed its doors in 1999.
The rush to build museums that continued from the 1970s through the early 1990s
came to an end, leaving a legacy today of museums that are faced with cuts to their
operating and collection budgets.
However, even in Japan, Beuys' art has continued to be discussed in minute detail.
Because many of Beuys' artworks consist of materials that are difficult to transport,
such as fat, steel and stone, it is difficult to see them outside of the European museums
that own the majority of them. However, these days it is possible to see his work in
permanent collection displays at Yamanashi Prefecture's Kiyosato Museum of
Contemporary Art, whose displays focus mostly on reference material related to
contemporary art; Kanagawa Prefecture's Museum Haus Kasuya, which also supports
the activities of young artists; and also the Kita Modern Art Museum in Nara
Prefecture. The works that exist in the collections of Japan's private museums tend to
be multiples. But, because Beuys himself saw such works as important tools for
conveying his thoughts to a large number of people, they are sufficient for conveying the
ideas behind his art.
The headline that appeared in Geijutsu Shincho in 1984 – "Ah, Beuys. It turns out he is
just an ordinary guy" – took on a life of its own, but even that article ends with one
sentence that is full of suggestion.

"If this visit to Japan by Beuys was the catalyst for serious reconsideration of the
until-then utterly uncritical and totally ignorant 'Beuys phenomenon,' then that
itself may be his parting gift to us." (42)

At the 1996 Keio University symposium, the critic Gunter Minas spoke of Beuys'
reception in Japan as follows:

"If a guilty sentence is to be passed on those who deliberately peddled an

inaccurate image of the master Beuys, then the same thing could be said of all his
supporter groups who tried to fit 'correct' images onto him." (43)

"It is because the art historians try to make Beuys' work fit within their catalog of
classical methodology that his political stance is undervalued. The
anthroposophists see Beuys as a pupil of Rudolf Steiner, but when it comes to his
art they rarely judge it on the basis of the classical modernism (the art of the early
20th century) on which it was founded. The politicians of the Green Party
recognize the social ecological activities of the artist, but they don't try to deal with
the full breadth of his artistic work. The art dealers take the attitude of being well
versed in his universe but tend to see his artistic objects as products and
opportunities for speculation." (44)

Even at the discussion that Beuys held with the students of Tokyo University of the Arts,
there were students who told Beuys directly, "I relate to and am interested in your
political statements, but I have no interest whatsoever in the works that you exhibit."
Meanwhile, at the press conference, there were a lot of questions about Beuys'
understanding of Steiner. Beuys speaks in a gentle tone, but does make some criticisms
of the anthroposophical society.

Perhaps now, a quarter of a century since his visit to these shores, the time has come for
"serious reconsideration" to be made of Joseph Beuys. His greatest works are of course
his drawings, installations, the records of his actions, but there is one other: the artist
who went by the name of "Joseph Beuys." Of course, you could call it the mythologizing
of the self. But, Beuys was a man who, if he did anything, lived in reality. The
documentary video from his visit to Japan shows not only the enthusiasm of the time,
but also his encounter with the Japanese – without dramatization, and with all the
elements of miscommunication that occurred.
At one point there is a moment when Beuys stands with his hand on his heart just
before he is about to go on stage for "A Performance for Two Pianos (Coyote III)" with
Nam June Paik at the Sogetsu Hall. Maybe he was for a moment worried about his
weak heart. Or perhaps he was trying to calm himself before the performance. In that
moment we can see a Beuys who is very different to the Beuys who delivered passionate
speeches in public about "social sculpture" and the "extended definition of art." In that
moment Beuys is a single man praying that if he injects all his strength in to that one
action, then maybe his message will get through. Just a year and a half later, Beuys
passed away.
We should not deify Joseph Beuys. But we must consider the strength he had to face all
the contradictions of human existence that he found inside himself – the strength he
had to overcome his past mistakes. We must think about the real nature of art. The
scenes recorded by a few Japanese of Beuys' eight days in Japan leave us the parting
gift of the image of a man endeavoring to use his limited time on earth to convey his art
– his message. Whether we choose to open the wrapping on that parting gift or close it
again is up to us.

1. "<Taidan> Koyo-te Kara no Messe-ji. Yo-sefu Boisu, Tono Yoshiaki" (A message from the coyote: a

conversation between Yoshiaki Tono and Joseph Beuys) in Sekai (November 1984), p. 300

2. Mark Rosenthal, "Joseph Beuys: Staging Sculpture" in Joseph Beuys Action, Vitrines,

Environments (Menil Foundation, 2004), p. 13

3. One of the easiest Beuys biographies to obtain in Japan is Heiner Stachelhaus (trans. Kazuhiro
Yamamoto), Hyoden Yo-sefu Boisu (Joseph Beuys) by (Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1994).

4. Benjamin, Buchloh, "Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol" in Claudia Mesch and Viola Michely (eds.),

Joseph Beuys: The Reader (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007). First published in Art-forum (January,
1980).

5. At the time the Luftwaffe was under the control of the Nazi Party, but Beuys was not himself a

member of the party.

6. Dirk Luckow (trans. Claudia Mesch), "The Reception of Joseph Beuys in the USA, and Some of Its

Cultural/Political and Artistic Assumptions," Mesch and Michely, Joseph Beuys: The Reader. First

published in 1998.

7. Luckow still insists that Beuys was the artist who became the most famous in the United States

after 1945.

8. Ichiro Haryu, "Asu wo Hiraku Geijutsuka 11: Yo-sefu Boisu – Bukimi na Kankei no Keijijogaku"

(Artists who show the way to tomorrow 11: Joseph Beuys – the odd relationship with metaphysics) in
Bijutsu Techo (January, 1970), pp. 212-213
9. Ibid., p. 215

10. Nam June Paik, "Boisu: Kaishakuteki Kaiwa" (Beuys: explanatory conversation) in Bijutsu Techo

(April, 1983), pp. 22-23

11. Ibid., p. 23

12. Yoshiaki Tono, "Stokkuholumu no Yo-sefu Boisu – Kaikoten wo Mite" (Joseph Beuys in Stockholm –

looking at his retrospective) in Bijutsu Techo (May, 1971), pp. 192, 201

13. Fumio Nanjo, "Boisu Rainichi Shushi no Tenmatsu" (The circumstances of Beuys’ visit to Japan) in

EOS No. 3 (June, 1983), p. 28.

14. For example: Toshiaki Minemura, "Rain no Hashi Kara no Ichibetsu: Chihosei wo Koeru Sono

Bijutsu" (A glance from the bridge over the Rhine: art beyond locality) in Bijutsu Techo (December,

1971); Yusuke Nakahara, "Hokoku: Venezia Bienna-re 1976 – Saisei to Hoko" (Report: Venice Biennale

1976 – regeneration and direction) in Bijutsu Techo (October, 1972); Yoshihiko Imaizumi, "Kokuban wo

Mae ni Rekucha Suru Boisu" (Beuys giving lectures in front of the blackboard) in Bijutsu Techo

(January 1981), etc. For further information on writings on Beuys in Japan, see "Tomoyo

Sanbonmatsu (ed.), "Bunken" (bibliography) in Yo-sefu Boisu – Haipa-Tekisuto Toshite no Geijutsu

(Joseph Beuys – art as hypertext) (Research Center for the Arts and Arts Administration, Keio

University, 1999).

15. "Thoughts and Action" was an art event featuring performances and lectures by five artists. Bruce

McLean, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham and Giulio Paolini came to Japan in October, 1982, but Beuys

alone postponed his trip. The event was organized by the Japan Foundation, Tokyo Metropolitan Art

Museum and Laforet Harajuku.

16. Beuys told Akira Moriguchi, a curator at Seibu Museum of Art at the time, that he did not go to
Japan at this time "because I could not find a clear reason within himself to go." Akira Moriguchi,

"Yo-sefu Boisu Ten, Kaisai Madeno Memo 1983.11.9 – 1984.5.29" (Notes on the period up to the

opening of the Joseph Beuys exhibition 1983.11.9-1984.5.29) in Tenrankai no E (Pictures at an

exhibition) (Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 2001), pp. 76

17. It was held until July 2.

18. With 27 artists, including Ay-O, Shusaku Arakawa, Yoshikuni Iida, Masuo Ikeda, Katsuhiro

Yamaguchi and Tadanori Yokoo, the exhibition was held September 5-14, 1975.

19. Akira Moriguchi, "Yo-sefu Boisu - Toki no Kane" (Joseph Beuys – a bell of time), Tenrankai no E, p.

63

20. Ibid., p. 64

21. "7,000 Oaks" was a project to plant 7,000 oak trees, each with accompanying basalt stones, along

the streets of Kassel.

22. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Vol. 1 and 2 (Shinchosha, 2009)

23. Akio Nakamata, "1984 Kara To-ku Hanarete" (Far Away from 1984) in kate paper Vol. 3 (2009), p.

38

24. Ibid., p. 39

25. Akira Asada, "Toso Suru Bunmei" (Civilization escapes) in Tosoron: Sukizo Kizzu no Boken (A

theory of escape: the adventures of the schizo kids) (Chikumashobo, 1984), p. 2

26. This documentary video was edited into an hour-long program, and sold along with a book

including records of Beuys' lectures and the press conference he held in Japan. Dokyumento: Yo-sefu

Boisu (Document: Joseph Beuys) (Seibu Museum of Art, WAVE and SPN, 1984.)
27. Ichiro Haryu categorized the Japanese people who welcomed Beuys as belonging to one of three

types: artists and art students who wanted direct contact with such a charismatic contemporary

performance artist and his works; followers of Rudolf Steiner, who Beuys had been influenced by and

whose work he had championed; people who were interested in the political aspects of his work – the

Green Party or the Third Way. Ichiro Haryu, "Boisu to Paiku no Aida" (Between Beuys and Paik) in

Bijutsu Techo (August 1984), p. 34. Incidentally, it is interesting that few reviews explored the
relationship between Beuys and war.

28. Genpei Akasegawa, Shigeo Anzai and Yoshiaki Tono, "Pafo-mansu" (Performance) in Eureka

(September 1984), p. 155

29. Shinichi Nakazawa, "Boisu, Paiku, Shizen, Shizen-Shugi – Dai San no Michi" (Beuys, Paik, nature,

naturalism – the third way) in Bijutsu Techo, (August, 1984), pp. 48-49

30. Hiroshi Unno, "Bunka Rodosha Nikki 8: Boisu ha Hotaru de Aru" (Diary of a cultural laborer 8:

Beuys is a firefly) in Atelier (September, 1984), pp. 104-105

31. "<Taidan> Koyo-te Kara no Messe-ji. Yo-sefu Boisu, Tono Yoshiaki," Sekai, (November 1984)

32. Uncredited, "Aa Boisu, Kite Shimattara Tada no Hito" (Ah, Beuys. It turns out he's just an
ordinary guy) in Geijutsu Shincho (July 1984)

33. Akira Moriguchi, Tenrankai no E, pp. 75-76

34. Keiji Uematsu, "Yo-sefu Boisu – Nippon heno Messe-ji" (Joseph Beuys – a message to Japan) in

Bijutsu Techo (June, 1984), p. 140.

35. Masao Shirakawa, "Ima mo Zanzon Suru Chu-sei no Yume: Yo-sefu Boisu wo Shiranai Sedai he"

(Medieval dream still alive: for the generation who does not know Joseph Beuys" in Bijutsu, Kioku, Sei

(Art, memory, life) (Suiseisha, 2007), pp. 227-228. First published in Aida Vol.131 (November, 2006).

36. Ibid. p. 229

37. Ibid. p. 230

38. Ibid. p. 231

39. The results are included in Geijutsu no Shakai-sei - Yo-sefu Boisu Kara no Toei (The social-ness of

art – projections from Joseph Beuys) (Musashino Art University, 1995)

40. Yo-sefu Boisu – Haipa-Tekisuto Toshite no Geijutsu

41. Akira Asada, Tosoron, pp. 2-7

42. "Aa Boisu, Kite Shimattara Tada no Hito," Geijutsu Shincho (July 1984), p. 35

43. Gunter Minas, "Kyo, Boisu to Tomo ni Nashiuru Koto – Gimon, Mujun, Katto" (What we can do

with Beuys today – questions, contradictions, conflicts) in Yo-sefu Boisu – Haipa-Tekisuto Toshite no

Geijutsu, p. 8
44. Ibid. p. 8