Art: The Noise of Beuys

At New York's Guggenheim, the guru of Düsseldorf

Joseph Beuys—sculptor, maker of happenings, guru and political fantasist—is without doubt the most influential artist in Europe. At 58, he is also one of the few genuine art world stars: the gaunt face, the felt hat that never comes off in public and the fishing jacket make up a uniform as immediately recognizable to his fans as Al Capone's fedora or Picasso's monkey mask. He even has a retinue of attendants, attired in cute red jumpsuits. For some years he has been one of the chief culture heroes in Germany, particularly in Düsseldorf, where he lives, teaches and, by way of extension of his social theories, sponsors an institute called the Free International University, supporting it with the large income from his work. He is seen by the right as a demented blend of gangster and clown, and by some of the less militant student left as a messiah.

Beuys (pronounced boyce) was called up into the Luftwaffe from a small north German town. He did not turn into a professional artist until he was in his 40s. Having survived a series of crippling depressions, he fills the role of the penitent prophet. His wartime experiences, particularly the occasion in 1943 when he crashed in a Ju-87 and was saved by wandering Tartar tribesmen who wrapped his traumatized body in felt and fat (thereby planting the germ of Beuys' later obsessive interest in fat and felt as art materials, emblems of healing and magic), have for his followers almost joined Van Gogh's ear in the hagiography of modern art. After refusing for years to exhibit at an American museum in protest against the Viet Nam War, Beuys is now having a retrospective, organized by the English art curator Caroline Tisdall, at the Guggenheim in New York City.

An extreme case of the reverence accorded to Beuys' work in Germany happened two years ago, when one of his pieces—a bathtub on a stand, dotted with bits of sticking plaster—was mistakenly used to cool beer during a party in the museum where it was stored. No damage was done to it, but the owner sued and was given $94,000 damages by a German court, a verdict happily greeted by Beuys as a victory over the "exploitative self-interest" of the beer drinkers. Plainly, something had happened to the avant-garde in the half-century since Marcel Duchamp suggested using a Rembrandt as an ironing board. Had it died of its own pomposity? If not, where was Beuys' claim to be an avant-gardist left? The problem is simple: there is no avant-garde any more, since its old ambitions of provocation and social attack have been swallowed by the prostrate tolerance of institutions. Its only battle is a shadow play, the game of opposing (or marginally embarrassing) its patrons, the bankers and art dealers who can afford to buy Beuys' work.