It is my impression that a lot of people on the list consider him to be
a key person in how they understand Fluxus to be. And the infamous
traveling show "Fluxus in Germany" sponsored and organized by IFA in
Stuttgart certainly states so. It is interesting that Beuys' pupil
Henning Christiansen also in Germany is considered associated with the
Flux network. He never was.
Eric
tartarugo wrote:
>
>
> Eric Andersen wrote:
>
>> It is amazing how especially German art history has manipulated lots
>> of people
>> to believe that Joseph Beuys was a central figure in the Flux
>> network. In fact,
>> there was not much contact. And Beuys' Selbstdarstellung, Shamanism
>> and
>> metaphysics are really quite opposite worlds to intermedia.
>>
>> Eric Andersen
>
> I agree with Eric. But I wonder that anybody thinks that Beuys was a
> central figure in the Flux network. Well, I really don't know if
> that's the view from USA but I think that from here, in Europe, it's
> very clear that for Beuys "Fluxus" was only another tool he used to
> develop his own project, althought he and some other Fluxus artists
> met in some festivals.
>
> Some comments by Beuys himself:
> "...I link only externaly, for organization, but not conceptually,
> with the neodadaists, with the Fluxus people, who was working, most of
> them, in the field of Dad�, and at the same time, I developed my own
> concept of Fluxus, independently of dadaism and neodadaism..."
>
> It seems that the use of the word Fluxus allowed Beuys to extend his
> own ideas during a time, through some festivals in Germany (as in
> "Festum Fluxorum - Fluxus" in Dusseldorf). He use only as propaganda
> and within the context of his own ideas and conceptual background.
> After the mid sixties, references to Fluxus or Flux in the title of
> his works became rare.
>
> (In another hand, it's interesting to observe that after this period,
> when Beuys use the term Fluxus for a work, this work is linked with
> music or acoustic elements and most of the cases, with compositions by
> Henning Christiansen, as in MANRESA or in Eurasientab 82 min fluxorum
> organum).
