Is art helplessly subordinate to politics? A discussion about the artist Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys during the Filz-TV performance, Copenhagen, 1966 – Source: Image from Lothar Wolleh - http://www.lothar-wolleh.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5843258 

This year's edition of the Berlinale film festival began with controversy. During the opening press conference, a journalist asked the jury for their statement on the Gaza conflict. After a long moment of hesitation, Ewa Puszczyńska (producer of “The Zone of Interest”) responded with a rambling statement that ‘films are not political’. She added that the question was ‘a little bit unfair’ because ‘she cannot be responsible for what [the viewers] decision would be.’  

Wim Wenders, the acclaimed director of films such as ‘Wings of Desire’ and also a member of the jury, agreed with this stance, stating: ‘We have to stay out of politics.’ The Film critic Wolfgang Schmitt saw in these responses ‘a great fear of speaking about certain political debates because of the threat of losing funding [from politicians].’ International filmmakers such as Tilda Swinton also criticised the Berlinale's ‘institutional silence’.  

It almost seems as if art is helplessly exposed to politics and forced to submit to it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump's war on culture in the USA is progressing almost smoothly: institutions are being renamed, exhibition texts revised, or entire exhibitions restructured. And if they resist, their funding is simply withdrawn. 

In view of this upheaval, it is understandable that those involved in the cultural industry can quickly fall into an existential crisis. One begins to question how much artistic activity can actually contribute to changing social problems. How much value and resilience do cultural goods really have? Are they merely a luxurious leisure activity, or can cultural production be a form of political opposition after all? 

One answer to this question may be found in the work of German artist Joseph Beuys. Beuys not only reflected his thoughts on politics in his art, but also actively participated in it. He exemplifies the fusion of art and politics – as a creator of artworks that can significantly influence political discourse. As Andy Warhol once said after meeting Beuys: ‘I like the politics of Beuys. He should come to the US and be politically active there. That would be great... he should be president.’

Joseph Beuys: Lecture Every Human Being an Artist, 1978 - Source: From Rainer Rappmann www.fiu-verlag.com - www.fiu-verlag.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1554568 

Since his birth, Joseph Beuys' life had been strongly influenced by politics. Born in 1921 in a small village in West Germany, he quickly joined the Hitler Youth with the rise of the National Socialists. The young Beuys initially wanted to become a doctor, but as a teenager he quickly felt at home in the fascist environment. So much so that in 1941 he volunteered for the German Air Force. Despite – or perhaps because of – the terrible environment, he later found his way to art here. He began to draw, mostly sketches of his immediate surroundings, and met a zoologist in the Wehrmacht who sparked his interest in sociology. 

But the terror continued to rage around him. By 1944, Hitler's glory days were long gone. In the west, the Americans and British were preparing to land in Normandy; in North Africa, the Germans had been driven out by the British; and in the east, Stalin was advancing closer to Berlin with each passing day. During this time, Beuys was sent to the eastern front to push back the Red Army. In Crimea, he was deployed as a co-pilot to carry out air strikes in line with Hitler's war plans. 

Joseph Beuys in front of his crashed aeroplane, 1943 

Yet, during a flight on 16 March 1944, his plane crashed. The pilot did not survive the crash, but Beuys did. Years later, Beuys reported that after the crash, he was found and rescued by the Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea. In a felt tent, he was reportedly rubbed with fat and fed honey. These three materials would later accompany him throughout his career and reappear in his art. Throughout his life, the story was repeatedly questioned as mere legend. Whether true or not, Beuys used it to mark his turning point away from National Socialism and toward art. 

Back in a Germany devastated by the Second World War, Joseph Beuys decided to pursue an artistic career at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He enrolled in the sculpture class and worked as a sculptor after graduating. His works from this period often consisted of gravestones or religious sculptures. This art, which was partly merely aesthetic, plunged Beuys into the familiar crisis of meaning: he questioned the social influence of his artistic work and finally decided to teach as a professor at the academy himself. 

Joseph Beuys at the entrance to the Düsseldorf Art Academy – Source: From Hans Lachmann / Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland from Düsseldorf/ Boppard, Deutschland - Josph Beuys - mit Fahrrad auf den Stufen der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50083060 

Provocation became an integral part of this work. During one of his performances, in which he played on a piano filled with water, a member of the audience felt so offended by the artist's actions that he punched Beuys in the face. In another performance in New York, the artist spent several days locked in a room with a coyote (symbolising the indigenous inhabitants of America), with the animal's toilet consisting of US political newspapers. Previously, in one of his performances, Beuys demanded in his invitation card that the East German Wall should be ‘raised by 5 cm’. At that time, the wall was a direct symbol of the tense Cold War. It divided Germany into two independent states that were in an immediate war with each other.  

Beuys' demands for a wall five centimetres higher was thus met with strong indignation. His appeal even reached the office of the then state minister, who was so angered by the artist's provocation that he demanded a statement from him. Beuys had succeeded for the first time: through provocation in his art, he caused a political stir and gained a platform for his ideas. In his following statement, he subsequently spoke out against all prevailing walls – those between men and women, rich and poor, and also between East and West. He used the stage to publicise his own ideology. Beuys had achieved his goal of transforming art into politics: art that not only talks about politics, but actively shapes it through provocation. 

The cover page of the programme of events for Beuys's ‘Free International University’ at documenta 7 - Source: From Pressebüro der Documenta GmbH Klaus Becker / Photo Dietmar Walberg - Pressemappe des Pressebüros der Documenta GmbH Juni 1982 / Foto own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1035168 

From here on, Beuys continued this approach. In 1967, him and his students founded a student party that advocated ‘absolute disarmament, a united Europe and the dissolution of dependence on East and West’. In 1972, during the Documenta art fair, he initiated the Organisation for Direct Democracy through Referendum. As the name suggests, this advocated anti-representative democracy. During the 100-day fair, to which various contemporary artists were invited, Beuys' contribution consisted of a room in which he invited visitors to discuss politics with him every day. A year later, he also founded the Free International University, an educational institution for workers, to give them access to political and economic knowledge alongside their jobs.  

Joseph Beuys' fusion of art and politics reached its peak in the late 1970s. At that time, German politics was in a state of upheaval: it was a period of transition from the heyday of the strong welfare state during the ‘economic miracle’ to the dawn of neoliberalism. At the same time, a vacuum was spreading across the political left. The 1968 movement had not brought about any discernible political change. During the German Autumn of 1977, the phase of the left-wing terrorist organisation RAF also came to an end with the suicides of its first generation. The political left was torn apart, riddled with terrorist connections and caught in a state that, despite all efforts, seemed unlikely to change. 

Joseph Beuys at the founding congress of the Green Party, 1980 – Source: Panorama TV-Show, das Erste 

At the end of the 1970s, the Green Party stepped into this political vacuum. It was formed on the basis of left-wing principles and spoke out against environmentally destructive wars and ‘reckless’ capitalism (and communism). Beuys made a pioneering contribution right from the start, back in 1978, when the party's manifesto was being drawn up. He campaigned on podiums, in the media and in pedestrian zones for the upcoming election. In addition, he made his studio available to the party, donated money and designed a motif for an election poster. Beuys was thus a founding member of a party that ultimately even co-governed in the German Bundestag until 2024. 

But when the Green Party entered the Bundestag in 1983 with 5.6% of the vote, Beuys was no longer part of it. After failing to secure a top spot on the party list, he withdrew his candidacy for the federal election in 1982. Art was never to become a central feature of the Green Party – it was too strongly associated with elitism. Beuys' criticism of representative democracy was also hardly compatible with the goals of the pragmatists in the party. Although he was a founding member of the Green Party, the party was able to function successfully without him. Politics was clearly not dependent on utopian art. 

Beuys' political aspirations repeatedly failed to translate his ideology into reality. His Organisation for direct democracy through referendums never achieved its goals, his concept of the Free International University was never realised, and even within the Green Party he ultimately remained a small cog that was easily replaceable. Up to this point in the story, politics seems to have the upper hand over art. Art appears to be a disruptive factor: sometimes, if it provokes too strongly, it is allowed to have its say for a moment, only to be ignored again afterwards. 

Joseph Beuys in front of “7000 Oaks – Urban Forestation Instead of Urban Administration”, 1982 – Quelle: Joseph Beuys 7000 Oaks | Documentation

One of the oaks, circa 2008

However, Beuys remained undeterred. For Documenta 7 in 1982, he created the artwork ‘7000 Oaks – Urban Greening Instead of City Administration’. The artist placed 7,000 basalt stones in front of the exhibition building. Art dealers and visitors could later purchase a stone for 500 DM (approx. 260 euros). For each stone sold, Beuys planted a tree in the city. In this way, he succeeded in combining consumerism with ecological commitment. A concept that is all too familiar today.  

Nowadays, it is no longer shocking when companies such as the search engine Ecosia (which plants trees for every search query) combine consumption with environmental awareness. But back then, this kind of thing was pretty much unheard of. Beuys’ artwork, which was dismissed as a utopian vision at the time, has become common practice years later. In this way, art can convey progressive ideas that, after initial rejection, are later adopted by politics and society. 

Joseph Beuys' political career was nowhere near as successful as his artistic one. However, the idea that art must be subordinate to politics proves to be a fallacy. Beuys may not have been able to change politics from within, but his art had an impact from the outside: his call for the abolition of the East-West border was partially implemented years later, his connection between consumption and environmental awareness is commonplace today, and the recognition of the indigenous peoples of America that he sought has increased significantly in recent years. 

It is precisely the utopian visions of art that seem to drive politics forward years later. Perhaps art can therefore be seen as the real progressive engine of politics. A medium that is in no way suppressed by politics, but actively guides it.