Esculpir a sociedade. O debate e a ação coletiva em Joseph Beuys

Abstract

This paper intends to reflect on the theme of the artistic activism in the work of Joseph Beuys. Foremost, we’ll briefly re-open neo-avant-garde studies facing historical avant-garde ones, based on the works by Peter Bürger, Hal Foster e Benjamin Bulcholz, in order to determine, critically, readings of the work by Joseph Beuys, and discovering in this one traces of a dissent in relation to Marcel Duchamp, therefore, a dissent in relation to an “antiart” understanding of artistic practice, and also in relation to the fetishism of the “readymade” cult. Secondly, we will reflect on the concept and practice of Beuys “social sculpture”, in the ambit of the artistic enlargement notion he claimed for, in order to understand the specificity of beuysian activism, or better, Beuys’ actions, in the double demarcation of his artistic ideario before any “ideological diktat” or any “protest aesthetics” which would denied the idea of art understood as “science of freedom”, claimed by Beuys. Finally, we will reflect on the impact the thought and the work by Rudolf Steiner had in Beuys’ thought and work, focusing the discussion in the description and analysis of Beuys’ intervention on the 6th Documenta in Kassel, materialized by the installation-action “Honey-pump in the working place”.