The Felt Hat: Joseph Beuys a Life Told [Paperback]

It would probably be hard to overestimate the impact the works of German artist Joseph Beuys have had on modern European art. This is true. It is also true that Beuys was, and still remains, a most fascinating figure, and a most inspiring one as well. Thought provoking, liberating, and magical. However, Beuys was no great philosopher. Actually, to be quite honest, he was equipped with a brain like a Swiss cheese, full of holes, and whenever he was asked to talk about art - or politics, or ecology, or whatever - most of what he had to say made no sense whatsoever. For those of us who are FOR BEUYS - compared to those who are against him - READING Beuys can be very depressing, being constantly confronted with nonsense, mixed with lack of knowledge and pure mumbo-jumbo, and not even the slightest bit sophisticated, or ironic. Durini's book contains transcripts of a discussion with Beuys, entitled "We are the revolution", and more.

Generally speaking, Durini's book is perhaps the most embarrassing one I've ever read. She, a (self-proclaimed?) "cultural professional, journalist, writer and patron" of the arts knew Beuys personally, and he - she says - changed her life. I bet he did. She was a Beuys groupie, and now that he's dead she's devoted her life to repeating over and over again just how splendid he was, and in all ways imaginable, strongly emphasizing - constantly - how fascinated HE was with HER, how SHE inspired HIM, and how THEY collaborated, and so on. Despite the book's subtitle, "A Life Told", it's not about the life of Joseph Beuys, and neither is it about art. Instead, Durini - it would seem - has taken every word Beuys ever ushered for granted, all of the nonsense and the mumbo-jumbo, and boiled it into a Swiss cheese soup, adding more than a few dashes of egomania. If it wasn't so absolutely pathetic, perhaps it could have been funny. But it isn't. As far as I am concerned, the MOST embarrassing part of the book is an "interview" conducted by a certain MBM, "interviewing" Durini. If she - Durini - didn't write ALL of this herself (and while I was reading I kept suspecting that she had ... Which (sane) interviewer would go, like MBM does, "In Beuys I see the totality of reason set within the context of life, and therefore in the real and the spiritual"? And what the heck does it mean?) ... Where was I? If she didn't make this up herself, MBM ought to be ashamed of himself. Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, I fear, would never even stop to consider.

Go buy some other book.

Durini has created a fantastical novel and work of scholarship. "The Felt Hat: Joseph Beuys a Life Told" is an immensely important read for anyone trying to understand the culture and life of post war Germany from the point of view of its artists. Having been sequestered since Hitler began to take power, the voices of many artists saw freedom in those like Joseph Beuys who survived the war. To understand this book one must look at the artist from the stand point of a mystic and a Shaman. A healer in a world awash with danger and disgrace. The life mission of Joseph Beuys was not so much to create art as it was to engage people with ideas and force each one of us to step outside our world of understanding and common ground.

To accomplish this very complex task in her book, Durini began by telling us the story of Beuys crashing his German bomber in Cirema, Russia in 1943. The story of his rescue is utterly false and completely fabricated by Beuys himself. The story was written to explain Beuys' use of specific materials in his art. Beuys created his own mythology and in doing so created his persona. The interviews which Durini has published for this book are extremely important source documents which cannot be found elsewhere. They include very intimate details of how Beuys became an artist and what drives him to engage people in communication. This desire to confront society and force people to question and think was again broached when Beuys started the Green party of Germany.

The Green party began as a party for the middle and lower class. The party was very concerned with the degradation of the environment and the building of a socialist state. Having since departed from many of these basic party platforms, the party remains only a shadow of it's original intent after Beuys' death. The simple fact that an ARTIST created a political party is tantamount. Not only is it rare in modern society, it is completely unheard of, especially in the United States! Beuys use of his voice to educate the public also extended to his lectures.

As a professor of art, Beuys routinely packed his lectures with youth filling every seat in an auditorium and allowing students to sit on stairs for an entire semester or longer if they took successive courses. His message was one of hope and social activism to ensure that his students and his country would change from what it had become under Hitler. This willingness to reclaim his own history, and the history of his country shows not only Beuys' magnanimity, but also his passion, love and concern for the well being of the human race.

Durini's book is as practical as it is fantastical. In a way it holds a mirror to the life works of Joseph Beuys and reflects them to the reader. The image we receive is reflected in such a way that the mythology and also the reality of Joseph Beuys becomes lucid.

It was the review above that put me off this book, but I read extracts from my university library and also consulted "joseph Beuys: the art of cooking" from the same author and found nothing of use, just a general rantings of the authors relationship to the artist. well, good for you - but how does this help me? or anyone else?
The author SEEMS to offer the same hero worship that Joseph Beuys was keen to escape from, given the dangers of idolising anyone, his critics certainly made a big deal of this (especially benjamin "quite mean" buchloh who compares Beuys to fascism and claims that a former luftwafe pilot cannot represent the art of post-war germany - but I say, look to your own problems in dealing with your national identity in the climate of psychological post-war reconstruction and leave the do-gooders be) and the image tends to override everything else - the lasting image is one of messiah and not creative freedom.

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