Joseph Beuys-Manresa (eng)

The first performances by Joseph Beuys were a radical turning point for twentieth-century art. Beuys saw art as a transformative action that is both personal and communal, and his expanded artistic practice engaged spirituality, personal mythology, political structures and symbolic materials. For MANRESA, one of his legendary performance actions, which took place on December 15, 1966 in Düsseldorf, he collaborated with the Danish artists Henning Christiansen and Bjørn Nørgaard. This book presents unpublished materials from the performance, including texts, images, scripts and preparatory drawings, while contributions from scholars and critics offer further insight. Art critic and Jesuit priest Friedhelm Mennekes analyses Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s imprint on Beuys’s work, while elucidating its spiritual complexity, looking beyond the popular vision of the artist as shaman. Pilar Parcerisas examines Beuys’s spiritual geography, explaining the importance the town of Manresa has within it while also laying out the physical and mystical coordinates of Eurasia, a site that was always present in Beuys’s work. Klaus-D. Pohl addresses the paradoxical union between Beuys’s mysticism and the neo-Dadaists of Fluxus. Beuys’s collaborator Bjørn Nørgaardrecalls his time working with the German artist and reflects on the paths he opened up. Finally, art historian and curator Harald Szeemann considers the possibility of liberating politics through spirituality.