Beuys (Andres Veiel, 2017); Joseph Beuys: An Interview (Lyn Blumenthal, Kate Horsfield, 1980); I Like America and America Likes Me (Helmut Wietz, 1981)
Joseph Beuys: an Interview
(
Documentary, Director: Lyn Blumenthal, Kate Horsfield, 1980)
Availability: November 13 – December 5, 2021
In this interview, Beuys recounts his own tangled experiences as a child in interwar Germany. The contradiction between an undestroyed natural environment, full of possibility, and the deeply troubled social body at the time was an intense and formative one. He recounts that "when I was five years old, I felt that my life had to go to an end because I experienced already too much of this contradiction." Beuys tracks his increasing ability to analyze the contradictions he felt, and the urgency during the WWII-era for renewing and re-posing questions central to the life, labor and freedom of the people.
Beuys also discusses his engagement with materials, the limits of preparation for a performance, and other issues important to his art practice. He continually addresses the urgency of an expanded understanding of art with the radical potential to transform the social body. He holds out the vital possibility of "another kind of art" where aesthetics is meaningless except as "the human being in itself.
A historical interview originally recorded in 1980 and re-edited in 2003 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.
I Like America and America Likes Me
(
Documentary, Director: Helmut Wietz, 1981)
Availability: November 20 – 21, 2021
Documented in this film is the performance "I Like America and America Likes Me" at Gallery René Block, New York, May 23 through 25, 1974. Joseph Beuys, upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport, immediately was wrapped in a felt cloth and driven to the gallery in an ambulance. There, in a cordoned off room, a coyote awaits him. Beuys will live with the coyote for several days and nights, observable at all times through a chain-link fence. In addition to the felt blanket, his props will include a walking stick, a triangle, a flashlight, gloves, and 50 copies of the "Wall Street Journal" per day. After the performance, Beuys is transported back to the airport in the same way he arrived.
Beuys
(
Documentary, Director: Andres Veiel, 2017)
Availability: November 13 – December 5, 2021
Hardly any twentieth century German cultural figure is as famous or as controversial as Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986), a performance artist, sculptor, graphic artist, art theorist and one-time professor. In his fast-paced and intelligent collage of countless images and audio documents, many of them previously unseen, the director Andres Veiel paints a picture of this unique man and artist whose restless creativity knew no bounds. Beuys is no conventional portrait; rather it is an intimate study of the man, his art and his ideas – stirring, provocative and astoundingly present. Beuys’ broad understanding of art takes him right to the heart of social debates that continue to be of relevance today.
Beuys by Andres Veiel is a wonderful documentary as well as a complete, instructive and respectful portrait of an important artist – who was always a sensation.
Andres Veiel’s fascinating film takes its stylistic cues from its restlessly creative subject. One could even argue that Beuys’ life was his main work – and that’s what makes Veiel’s fine, thoughtful documentary such a pleasure to watch. (
Screen Daily)
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