Joseph Beuys
Vierte Veränderung
12.04.2012

Opinions were divided on his holistic, grassroots democratic concept of art. During his lifetime, the trained sculptor, draftsman, performance artist and university professor polarized the art world, including here in Bremerhaven. When the Kunstverein showed a Beuys exhibition for the first time in 1978, a public exchange of blows broke out between outraged visitors and supporters in the letters to the editor column of the Nordsee-Zeitung. The debate and thus the Beuys exhibition in the seaside city were noticed nationwide and triggered a broader discussion locally about the concept of art and the optical manifestations of contemporary art.
Today, Joseph Beuys (1921 - 1986) is one of the most important artists and last visionaries of the 20th century in art history. The ordinary materials he used, which at the time were not considered art historical and were perceived as unartistic, such as fat and felt, have now found their way into the art world. The unintentional destruction of his works of art has become a symbol of misunderstood or unrecognized art, even if it is often anecdotally abbreviated. His sentence “Every person is an artist,” which is often taken out of context, has gained positive popularity, and his comprehensive and democratically defined “extended concept of art,” which is the theoretical basis of this sentence, has had a lasting impact on subsequent generations.

With this in mind, when the Kunstverein organized another Beuys exhibition with exhibits from Moyland Castle in 2005, there was great interest. The first exhibition in 1978 had already received an unusually high public response for the time, with more than 800 visitors. Around a quarter of a century later, public interest was even higher. Several thousand visitors did not want to miss out on the “phenomenon” of Beuys in Bremerhaven, but wanted to have it explained to them. For a time, Beuys and the visual arts became the talk of the town, attracting public and national attention, which in retrospect contributed positively to the museum planning at the time.
This local historical significance and the art historical status gave the Kunstverein the reason to dedicate a separate room to Joseph Beuys as part of the “changes” to the permanent exhibition in the Kunstmuseum. The room, like all other artist rooms in the museum, is based on the Kunstverein’s collection. Unique exhibits are presented, such as the original of the widely published photograph that Joseph Beuys showed in 1976 in the Kunstverein Frankfurt with a group of students, or well-known editions that played an important role in the artist’s oeuvre in spreading his artistic ideas.