A German fighter pilot during the second War World, Beuys was engaged in battle at the Crimea when his plane was shot down. According to himself – and in an account that has by now ossified into an art-world folklore, he was rescued from near death by the nomadic Tartars who roamed the Crimean lands. For the next 12 days, Beuys was in a state of semi-consciousness when he was kept nursed by the Tartars and kept warm with fats as well as felt. But Beuys the soldier had died. In his place was the new Beuys, self-proclaimed shaman, healer and artist – and felt, along with fat, will come to have a special significance in his subsequent artistic practice. For example in Coyote - I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974, he arrived at the Kennedy Airport wrapped in felt,
and was delivered in an ambulance to the gallery, where he interacted with a Coyote – introducing it to a variety of materials – like felt.
To understand Beuys' many performances and installations, and his obsessive use of fat and felt – it is necessary for the spectator to have access to a highly personalized network of symbolic significances, a network intricately enmeshed withinhis biography – or more specifically his artistic myth of origin.
Hence the key to understanding the Felt Suit, 1970 – which is one of his most iconic works, is knowledge of the entire constellation of myth surrounding the man. To understand the symbolism of the Felt Suit, is to understand how Beuys – the man, the artist, was made in the Crimea, emerging as he did from the felt of the Tartar as a butterfly from its chrysalis.
When one looks at the Felt Suit , one feels the web of aura surrounding the name of Joseph Beuys – and what power of personality – the presence of his missing body – in the same way that one reads the presence of Christ into the Shroud of Turin.
The Felt Suit, 1970 is an auratic object of ritual – it is like the sacrament marking the resurrection of Beuys - from killer to healer, man to Shaman.
and was delivered in an ambulance to the gallery, where he interacted with a Coyote – introducing it to a variety of materials – like felt.
To understand Beuys' many performances and installations, and his obsessive use of fat and felt – it is necessary for the spectator to have access to a highly personalized network of symbolic significances, a network intricately enmeshed withinhis biography – or more specifically his artistic myth of origin.
Hence the key to understanding the Felt Suit, 1970 – which is one of his most iconic works, is knowledge of the entire constellation of myth surrounding the man. To understand the symbolism of the Felt Suit, is to understand how Beuys – the man, the artist, was made in the Crimea, emerging as he did from the felt of the Tartar as a butterfly from its chrysalis.
When one looks at the Felt Suit , one feels the web of aura surrounding the name of Joseph Beuys – and what power of personality – the presence of his missing body – in the same way that one reads the presence of Christ into the Shroud of Turin.
The Felt Suit, 1970 is an auratic object of ritual – it is like the sacrament marking the resurrection of Beuys - from killer to healer, man to Shaman.
in Substation Magazine, Four Suits – Of Memes and Men by Ho Tzu Nyen
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