"EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST"

The Art of Trenise

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“Every human being is an artist”

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow infused real energy, the energy of real-life events, into their works. One may say that for these creators, art had the same value as any other occurrence like breathing, walking, sweeping the floor. Both of them saw an artistic potential in the ordinary aspects of life, filling their materials with the poetry, dynamism, and emotions of the unexpected, the unlikely, while inviting the casual viewer, or even the curator in the case of Beuys, to become an active participant in the elaborations/interpretations of the works. In this sense, life and art were approached as an indivisible unity generating rhythms of existence, gestures, forces that create harmony and balance, as well as revelatory marks that restore liveliness and sensations.

According to Mark Rosenthal, Beuys’s primary job as an artist was to encourage notions of a better world, inspired by the idealist context of the mid-1960s (13). He developed a project of transgression and resurrection, using organic materials like animal fat to create his flexible sculptures. He saw in art the opportunity to stage elements of life that have spiritual and intellectual implications but that are not considered conventionally attractive. Rosenthal comments that Beuys thought of a sculpture as a reusable resource, mutable as life itself (25). Terms like energy, movement, and action nurtured his work, allowing the commonplace to be transformed into the extraordinary and poetic (57). The artist frequently explored “the wound” in his art, a term connected with illnesses of all kinds, incursions in a body, openings into the ground, and emotional scars and suffering (Rosenthal 68). Sometimes his works served as healing centers that evoked trust in chance events and faith. Rosenthal argues that Beuys “created situations in which warmth and therapeutic healing could take place through revitalizing energy and change” (75). Death as a means of channeling consciousness was another of Beuys’s favorite topics, seen in his constant treatment of disintegrating materials. His sculptural work has been termed Postminimalism because of his use of industrially derived materials with unconventional substances and his meaningful approach to geometry (Rosenthal 99).

Kaprow also worked on moving away from the specialized zones of art toward the particular places and occasions of everyday life (Kelley xii). As Jeff Kelley affirms, he was interested in the meanings of life and all his writings consisted of philosophical inquiries about the nature of experience (xiii). Kaprow identified five models of communication that include situations, operations, structures, feedback and learning (xvi). For him, the notion of forms had to do with mental imprints projected upon the world as metaphors of our mentality, which were to be useful only by opening up to innocence, humor and spontaneity (xxii). In one of his articles, Kaprow writes that we must be acrobats (not critics) to properly grasp the impact of Jackson Pollock’s work since his paintings seem to have a “fascinating simplicity and directness” (5-7). Kaprow described the happenings as events that happen, although they appear to go nowhere, do not make any particular literary point and have no structured beginning, middle or end (16). Their form is open-ended and fluid, gathering a number of essential and intense occurrences in natural surroundings. The element of chance, as in the case of the surrealists, occupies an important position in the happenings. As Kaprow argues, “chance is a deliberately employed mode of operating that penetrates the whole composition and its character,” becoming the vehicle to the spontaneous and implying risk and fear (19). In this regard, the happenings reveal a spirit that is passive in its acceptance of what may occur and affirmative in its disregard of security (Kaprow 21).

There is no distinction between the happenings and the daily life. Happenings use materials that come from life, are dispersed, variable and independent of the convention of continuity, avoid form theories associated with the arts, are not rehearsed, and exercise no control over audiences. Essentially, the happenings provide a platform, where “the artist” takes the risk of becoming a human being. 

 

Artists/Writers Consulted:

Z)   Beuys               
©)  Kaprow               
♣)   Kelley                 
2)   Rosenthal           
a)   Trenise