A major exhibition of the work by German artist Joseph Beuys opens at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition titled 'A Collection in the Making: Joseph Beuys Multiples' features around 300 of his 600 works drawn primarily from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Brilliant or bewildering are the words that spring to mind when confronted with the work of Joseph Beuys.
From 1965 to 1985, Joseph Beuys produced almost six hundred multiples in a variety of media. Each piece represented a specific moment in his life. Joseph Beuys was not afraid to criticise the work of others. One of his works involved dipping five reels of the 1963 movie 'The Silence' into zinc and copper to render them both silent and imageless, a critique of avant-garde artists who ignored social and political issues in their work.
Professor Richard Demarco of the Royal Society of the Arts believes Joseph Beuys was saying that,
We have to begin to work harder in the name of art, in the way we use the language of art. We have to be seen to be able to heal, for example, through art the ills of society.
Joseph Beuys originally planned a career in medicine but joined the German Air Force in 1940 as a combat pilot. Seriously injured during the war, he ended up in a British prisoner-of-war camp. After graduating from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, he became a professor there and insisted that admission to the academy should be open to all who applied. He was dismissed from his post in 1971.
One of his installations titled 'Felt TV' involved him challenging the assault of information from television by putting on boxing gloves and repeatedly hitting a television.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 5 May 1999. The reporter is Colm Connolly.
