Joseph Beuys - Into Fat Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Joseph Beuys - Into Fat - Essay Example The paper "Joseph Beuys: Into Fat" analyses Joseph Beuys and his art. â€Å"That’s how the Tartars found me days later. I remember voices saying ‘Voda’ (water), then the felt of their tents, and the dense pungent smell of cheese, fat and milk. They covered my body in fat to help it regenerate warmth, and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep warmth in.† It was written in Wikipedia that this story has served as a powerful myth of origins for Beuys’ artistic identity, as well as providing an initial interpretative key to his use of unconventional materials. However, this myth was not mentioned, even if to be shrouded in fiction, in an idiosyncratic CV that Beuys produced in a 1964 festival, title Life Course/Work Course. This CV was a self-consciously fictionalized account of the artist’s life, in which historical events mingle with metaphorical and mythical speech, marking a blurring of fact and fiction that was to be characteristic of Beu ys’ self-created persona. Thus, it was a debate on the grounds of the plane crash myth, for had it been a real occurrence, it would have had a place it Beuys’ CV. Had it been made-believe, it would still secure a place in the controversial CV being that the myth provided the inspiration for his life’s work. And yet it was never to be documented this plane crash which happened in Cremia and his eventual meeting with the Tartars who taught Beuys the healing properties of fat and felt. Beuys staged performances or what he call â€Å"actions† which had the magic of rituals.