One fascinating aspect of Joseph Beuys's personal history is the reason he consistently used felt and fat in his works. He is quoted as saying: "For me, fat was a great discovery, because it was the very material that could seem the most chaotic and indeterminate. I could use it with heat or cold, I could transform it with means that are not the traditional ones for sculpture- with temperature, for example. So I could turn the character of this fat from a chaotic and fluctuating condition to that of a rigid form... So I took an extreme position in sculpture and a material that was absolutely fundamental for life and not associated with art.”
Many people believe that this use of felt and fat recalled a plane crash experienced while flying for the "Luftwaffe" in the Crimea in the winter of 1942-43. Beuys claimed that he had been saved by a nomadic tribe of Tartars who, sympathetic to the Germans after persecution by the Soviets, ‘covered my body in fat to help it regenerate warmth, and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep warmth in’. In fact this episode was fabricated, partly on the basis of a dream, but he consistently referred to this episode and it can be seen as a private mythology of his.
After the war Beuys studied at the academy in Düsseldorf from 1946 to 1951. For most of the 1950s he was mostly drawing.
In 1961 he became professor of sculpture there, but was fired in 1972 because he said that his classes must be open to anybody who wanted to take them. He thought that classes should be free and he worked in his classes with everybody who wanted. His students protested when he was fired, so he was allowed to hold his studio there, but he still lost his job.
In 1962 Beuys was member of the "Fluxus movement". They made art together by drawing, sculpting, making music, and literature.
Beuys believed that arts has an important role in society. His first problems with politicians were when he lost his job as professor.
In the 1980s he was part of the Peace Movement and protested against nuclear missiles in Germany. He was one of the first members of the Green Party in the 1980s.
Famous works are for example:
In 1979, a large retrospective of Beuys' work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City confirmed his reputation as one of the most important artists of his time. He died in 1986 in Düsseldorf.
The web comic Cat And Girl makes frequent reference to Joseph Beuys, including his art (reference 1 reference 2) and cultural references.
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well-known all over the world by its most famous members like Joseph Beuys.
The arts school started 1762 as school of drawing by Lambert Krahe (1710 - 1790), in 1773 it became Academy of drawing, painting and sculpturing of the Earls of Palatine.
In time of the Napoleonic Wars it moved to Munich. So the government of Prussia, who annexed the region of Düsseldorf after Napoleon surrendered, to open a new Royal Arts Academy in Düsseldorf. It started in 1822.
In the 1850s the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf became an international well-known arts school. The "Düsseldorfer Malerschule" was internationally known as a special kind of drawing countryside. Many students came from Scandinavia, Russia, and the United States of America to Düsseldorf.
Poet
A poet is someone who writes poetry. Poetry can be written in any language by a poet.
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet. She lived in Lesbos, Greece. She was famous for writing lyric love poems to women. She wrote in the Ancient Greek language.
Famous English poets are William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Keats, and Percy Shelley. They wrote in the English language. Their poetry comes in different styles and forms. Often their poetry is lyrical and rhymes.
The most famous American poets include Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. They wrote in English. Often their poetry did not rhyme. They lived in the 19th century in the United States. Later 20th century American poets include Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton.
Modern French poets are Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire. Rimbaud was famous for his poetry collection called “Illuminations.” Baudelaire wrote of beauty, decay, and spirituality in his famous work “Flowers of Evil.”
Great Spanish poets are Garcilaso de la Vega Frederico García Lorca, Antonio Machado, and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Vicente Aleixandre won the Nobel Prize.
Three Latin American poets won the Nobel prize in the 20th century. They include Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. They wrote in Spanish.
Caribbean poets Derek Walcott and Giannina Braschi wrote epic poetry. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Walcott wrote "Omeros" and "In a Green Night" in English. Giannina Braschi writes epic poetry in English, Spanglish, and Spanish, including "Empire of Dreams"
Ancient Chinese poets are Wang Wei, Du Fu, and Qu Yuan. They wrote in Chinese about the nature and man.
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
The is one of the biggest universities in Germany. It is in the Ruhr-Area, in the city of Bochum.
The Ruhr-Universität was the first public university that was founded in West Germany after World War II (in 1962). Later in the 1960s, education expanded in West Germany and more universities were founded, but Bochum has a bright selection of subjects because it was the beginning of education expanding.
The Ruhr-University was one of the fourth largest university in Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s with more than 40,000 students. But after the state of North Rhine-Westfalia decided to earn study fees, many students left the university and school examiners do not start studying anymore. Actually the fees are 1,000 Euro in the year (about 1,100 US $), but the Ruhr-Area is traditionally a working class region. Sommer Semester 2011 was the last semester with tuition fees http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/studienbeitrag/ . The number or students now is more than 34 000 http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/universitaet/fakten/menschlich/index.html
The university of Bochum was one of the first to have Bachelor and master's degrees instead of the traditional German Diplom and Magister degree.
The Ruhr-University has about 34,000 students.http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/universitaet/fakten/menschlich/index.html Academically it is an upper middle-class university with a lot of international affairs, especially with Eastern Europe and Asia. The Ruhr-University Bochum lost some subjects by when the state reduced its budget.
The main focuses in research are neurosciences, engineering, European law, plasma physics, solidstate physics, biochemistry, economics, Middle Ages and modern history, philosophy and languages.
Aachen
Aachen ( ; Aachen dialect: "Oche" ]; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle ; Latin: "Aquae Granni" or "Aquisgranum"; ) is a German city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has about 260,000 inhabitants and a well-known university, the .
The Romans built a spa over hot water springs here in ancient times.
In the Middle Ages, it was the capital city of the Frankish emperor, Charlemagne. The city was called Aix-la-Chapelle by the French.
Charlemagne ordered the building of a cathedral in 786 AD. He was buried in a tomb in this cathedral. German emperors were crowned in the cathedral in Aachen until 1531.
European countries made two important peace agreements in Aachen. In 1668, the first treaty (agreement) ended the War of Devolution between France and the alliance of England, Holland and Sweden. The treaty allowed France to keep most of the towns it had captured in Flanders the year before. In 1748, the second treaty ended the War of the Austrian Succession. In this war, France, Prussia, and other nations tried to take territory from the Austrian Empire. The treaty said that Maria Theresa of Austria was the ruler of these territories. It also gave Prussia the territory of Silesia.