The 12th of May would have been Joseph Beuys’ 100th birthday. It is time to look back and examine the legacy of the artist who profoundly challenged our concept of art and its relation to life, politics, and the environment. To mark the centenary we are pleased to host a conversation between British artist and writer David Beech and Catherine Nichols, one of the artistic directors of beuys 2021, a year-long programme of exhibitions and events taking place in Germany. Looking at Beuys’ art from the perspective of the artist and the curator respectively, they will critically discuss the impact of Beuys' complex and controversial work on art and society and its relevance in 2021.
Dave Beech is an artist and writer who was a member of the Freee Art Collective. His artworks consist of sequences of montages with texts that reflect critically on the history of documentary film and photography. His work has been exhibited at the Istanbul and Liverpool Biennales. Beech researches the formative social conditions for artistic practice and its relations to broader social and political forces. His books include The Philistine Controversy (with John Roberts, 2002), Art and Value: Art’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics (2015), and most recently Art and Labour: On the Hostility to Handicraft, Aesthetic Labour and the Politics of Work in Art (2020). He is Reader in Art and Marxism at the University of the Arts, London.
Catherine Nichols is an arts and literary scholar, curator and writer based in Berlin. She has curated a wide range of contemporary art and cultural history exhibitions on topics ranging from the Reformation to the passions, from the sun to sexuality. In collaboration with Eugen Blume she has curated several exhibitions engaging with the work of Joseph Beuys, among them the retrospective
Beuys: We are the Revolution (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2008),
The End of the 20th Century: The Best Is Yet to Come (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2013) and the experimental exhibition
Capital: Debt – Territory – Utopia (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2018). She has written and edited numerous publications on contemporary art, such as
Black Mountain. An Interdisciplinary Experiment, 1933–1957 (2015) and
Shine on Me. Wir und die Sonne (2018). She is currently the artistic director of the centenary programme
beuys 2021, as part of which she is preparing the exhibition
“Everyone Is an Artist” Cosmopolitical Exercises with Joseph Beuys (K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf Mar 27 — Aug 15, 2021) together with Isabelle Malz and Eugen Blume.
beuys 2021. 100 years of joseph beuys comprises a programme of exhibitions and events at around 20 museums and cultural institutions across the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Under the artistic direction of the curators and Beuys experts Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols, this joined programme embarks upon a critical reappraisal of the complex practice and international influence of Joseph Beuys, who was born in the Rhineland.
Book Tickets Through Eventbrite
From Wednesday 12 – Saturday 15 May we will be streaming the documentary Beuys by Andres Veiel (2017). For more information and booking a free ticket please click
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