Of course, not everyone is a painter or a sculptor.
Joseph Beuys did not mean that with his famous saying that everyone is an artist.
His expanded concept of art refers to the creative potential of human thought and action, which not only enables each individual, but also makes them responsible for helping to shape society.
The individual becomes the creator of the much-cited “social sculpture” and is therefore entitled to direct political participation.
By founding the “Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendum”, with which Beuys was a guest at Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972, he gave these ideas institutional emphasis. The rose, which was then on the desk of his information office, later became a circulation object. Number 231 of the 440 signed copies is in the Wiesbaden Museum. The “Rose for Direct Democracy” is the most prominent exhibit in the Beuys room there, which houses the Murken collection, which otherwise consists mainly of paper objects. At the same time, it is a paradigmatic work for the design of the Wiesbaden celebrations for the 100th birthday of the action artist born in 1921 in Kleve, Lower Rhine.
Director Andreas Henning and his team were smart enough not to use this date as an opportunity for another exhibition in the classic sense.
One could only have lost the comparison with other houses that are more broadly positioned with regard to Joseph Beuys, such as the Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Instead, three “interventions” commemorate the jubilee.
These events focus less on his sculptural and graphic work than on the social issues raised by the works belonging to the collection, thereby paying tribute to the equally important thinker and theoretician.
Regulate referendums at federal level
At the beginning of this month, interested parties were invited to talks about the “healing powers of art” in the Beuys room. The fact that the artist was convinced of their existence appealed to the collector: Axel Hinrich Murken is a doctor and medical historian. With the “Omnibus for Direct Democracy”, which will stop at the museum forecourt until Friday, Beuys' commitment to social participation is taking shape. Behind this is a donation-financed initiative that fights for the people to vote on such important topics as climate goals, organ donations or the profit orientation of hospitals and not only politicians decide on them.
The mission began in 1987, a year and a half after Beuys' death, during Documenta 8. The bus that started to move and toured Germany from then on was scrapped in 2001. Today it serves as an apiary in the Freudenberg district of Wiesbaden. Since then, Werner Küppers has been at the wheel of the successor model, who has also made his home in it and gives the initiative a distinctive face with a gray hair knot and bare feet. The 70-year-old bon vivant, who is on the road with changing, mostly young colleagues, became a Beuys apostle 50 years ago. At that time he was on the run because he had refused to do alternative civilian service and wanted to prepare a test case. At the master craftsman in Düsseldorf he found more than just an open ear:To support Küppers' project, Beuys withdrew 300 marks from his fishing vest.
In view of the approaching federal election, the Wiesbaden bus station is now dominated by the demand for a law that uniformly regulates referendums at the federal level.
From morning to evening, Küppers faces every discussion and hopes to have collected half a million signatures by September, which will then be handed over in Berlin.
He can also feel commissioned to do this by Joseph Beuys, who once postulated: “The future we want must be invented.
Otherwise we'll get one that we don't want. "
The bus will be in front of the Wiesbaden Museum until July 30th, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and then again from October 5 to 8 on the topic of “Democracy and Money”.