Joseph Beuys, or The Last of the Proletarians

Author(s): Thierry de Duve

Source: October, Vol. 45 (Summer, 1988), pp. 47-62
Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779043
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 Joseph Beuys, or The Last
of the Proletarians

THIERRY DE DUVE

Milton produced Paradise Lost for the

same reason a silkworm producessilk. It
ofhis nature.
was an activity
- Karl Marx, Capital, Book IV

If the silkwormwere to spin in order to

as a caterpillar,it
providefor its existence
wouldbe a perfect wage-worker.
- Karl Marx, Wage-Laborand Capital

Overcome by an illnessthattook hold of him- like a statue- by the feet,

Joseph Beuys died on January21, 1986, after having installedin the Capodi-
monte Museum in Naples what should be seen as more thanjust his last exhibi-
tion; it should rather be seen as his testament.On the walls were seven gold-
leafed monochromes, measuring the height of a man and asymmetrically
arranged: fouron the right-handwall,one on the farwall,two on the wall at the
left.Withinthe room stood two cases, or rather,glass caskets-one displaced to
a position near the left-handwall, the other right in the middle. The first
contained the pathetic implementsof a transientor bum, these arranged in a
vaguely anthropomorphicmanner: a backpack servingas "head," two bronze
canes, one rolled in felt,doubling as "arms," two rollsof fatand a roll of copper
bound withtwinestandingfor "chest," and a slab of lard for "legs." Alongside
this dismemberedbody ran a bronze crutch to which were attached two large
electrical clamps. There lay the artist as vagabond- as itinerant clown-
encumbered with his meager supplies and limping down the road to exile.
Oedipus at Colonnus.
In the central casket the portraitwas more composed, tragic, majestic.
Oedipus Rex. A cast head (the same that topped the Strassenbahnhaltestelle at
the 1982 Venice Biennale), its mouth agape as for a last death-cry,protruded
froma greatcoatmade of hare-skinand lined in blue silk,at the feetof whichwas

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JosephBeuys.Palazzo Regale. 1985.

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set the conch shellof a hoped-forrebirth.Two cymbals(used in theperformance

Titus/Iphigenia)stood in at the place where, in the other coffin,the electric
clamps withtheirsupportingcrutchwere located. There lay the artistas tragic
monarch,clad in the regalia of his office.The installationwas, moreover,titled
Palazzo Regale.1
It is as vain to tryto choose betweenthe twoimagesof himselftheartisthas
wishedto bequeath us as it would be mistakento thinkthat-as ifretracingthe
career of Beuys-they map a trajectoryfromthe marginalityof his beginnings
to the triumphof his end. Like the facesofJanus,the twogisantsare inseparable.
And theyare mutuallyindispensibleforunderstandingwhat Beuys,throughout
his whole lifeas an artist,wishedto incarnate.The rulerand the tramp,the king
and his fool,are but one of the bi-cephalicavatarsof the artist.There are many
othersof themthatalso show,on the one hand, his indefatigableevangelism,his

1. For a similardescription,though withmore hagiographicovertones,see Thomas McEvilley,

"HicJacet Beuys," Artforum,vol. 24, no. 9 (May 1986), pp. 130-131.

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 50 OCTOBER

political combativeness,his pedagogical joy, his revolutionaryor evolutionary

optimism,his propensityto take the role of leader; and, on the other hand, his
mysticalarchaism,his high sense of the patheticin constantoscillationbetween
farceand tragedy,his tendencyto play the victim,his empathyforall the anomic
and sacrificialfiguresof humanity.That of Christ- victimand redeemer- is at
the crossing of a double series of identifications:chief and child, priest and
scapegoat,shepherdand coyote,stagand hare, composerand thalidomidebaby,

JosephBeuys.Celtic + - . BlockhausSt.Jacob.Basler
Theater.Basel. April5, 1971.

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JosephBeuys,or The Last oftheProletarians 51

social reformerand rebel, legislatorand outlaw,statesmanand prisoner,media-

tor and recluse, orator and deaf-mute,prophet and buffoon,professorand
student,shaman and sham, utopianistof the futureand embalmer of the past.2
The ritual, obsessional, and quasi-exhaustivecharacter of this list of the
roles he eitherassumed or impersonated(lacking- and thisis significant -
only
that of worker and prostitute)sets up echoes between Beuys's work and an
already extensivelitanyof similaridentifications, all of them allegorical of the
conditionof the artistwithinmodernity,all of themleading directly- more than
a centurydistant- to a mythicalcountrypeopled withall the romanticincarna-
tions of the excluded as bearers of social truth.The name of this country-
where strollersand dandies cross paths withpeddlers and ragpickers;where art
studentsand medical studentsthumbtheirnoses at philistines;where the sinsof
the streetwalkerare redeemed by the love of a young poet; where humanityis
more humane in the brothelthan in the churchor palace; wherethe underworld
is the true aristocracy,tuberculosisthe pardon for syphilis,and talent the only
riches-the name of this countrythat rings with all the cries of injusticeand
where- radically- the onlyone denied a visa is the bourgeois,the name of this
countryis of course bohemia. It is a literaryand imaginarycountrywhere, in a
deformed image at once tragic and ideal, there was dreamed a humanityto
replace the real humankindthatpeopled the Europe of the nineteenthcentury,
and thatindustrialcapitalismhad pitilesslyset againstitselfby dividingit intotwo
new antagonisticclasses,the bourgeoisieand the proletariat.Doubtlessly,the real
name of bohemia is the lumpenproletariat,or at least, the name of its correlate
withinthe actual world:a no-man'sland intowhichtherefella certainnumberof
people incapable of finding a place within the new social divisions-
expropriatedfarmers,out-of-work craftsmen,pennilessaristocrats,countrygirls
forced into prostitution.Dickens and Zola have described this dark fringeof
industrialization,these shady intersticesof urbanization. But, like Baudelaire,
Hugo, and many other novelistswho hardlyprofessednaturalism,theypoured
their inspirationinto it, contributingto the fabricationof the image of this
marginal,lumpenproletariatsocietytransposedintobohemia, functioningall the
more as the figureof a humanityof replacementin thatitis a suffering humanity,
such that nothing but true human values--liberty, justice, compassion--can
survivethere,and such that it containsthe seeds of a promiseof reconciliation.
To the denizens of bohemia, to Daumier, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, to the

2. Whereas Beuys claimed a forward-looking,emancipatorytheory of social sculpture,he often

gave his work an archaic, purportedlytimelesslook.In factboth the theoryand the look are dated.
Annette Michelson noted that Beuys's fascinationwithelectricalenergy refersto both theories of
electricityand formal aspects of electrical contraptionsthat leave off around 1830, "just after
Faraday." This precise date is a symptomindeed. See "Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim," a
conversationbetween Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson,October,
no. 12 (Spring 1980).

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52 OCTOBER

Picasso of the Rose and Blue Periods, to Rouault, and manyothers,there were
presented the faces of Don Quixote and Scapin, of laundresses and opera
dancers, of dwarfsand nightclubsingers,of saltimbanquesand harlequins,the
face of Mary Magdalene and that of Christ.It is to thisgalleryof portraitsthat
Beuys adds his own, it is thisgallerythat he recapitulatesand bringsfullcircle,
and which he reconnects- perhaps unwittingly - to its conditions of emer-

gence. All these portraitsshow the artistas bohemian,the incarnationof suffer-

ing humanityand of thejust man of the future.All are portraitsof the artistas a
proletarian.
The proletarian-a term that transcodesthebohemianas a social type that
excludes thebourgeois but includesall the restof humanitysuffering fromindus-
trialcapitalism- is not (or not necessarily)a memberof the proletariat,that is,
the workingclass. Of this latter,the mythof bohemia offersa displaced and
transposed image; it creates of a transnationalreality an imaginaryland, a
quasi-nation,withoutreal territorialfrontiers,since it is peopled with nomads
and gypsies,unreal, likeJarry'sPoland. The workerhimselfis rarelyan inhabi-
tant. The image of bohemia, one could say, is ideological to the extent that it
occults the reality that it is precisely charged with transposing:the massive
proletarianizationof all the men and women who did not belong to the bour-
geoisie. But theproletarianis a constructionno less ideological- or mythical- of
the same personage or social typethatthebohemianexpressesin the discourseof
art and of literature.Simply,it expressesit in the discourseof politicaleconomy,
that of Marx, and even more specifically,of the young Marx.
What, then, is a proletarianfor Marx? He is someone-no matterwho
-who findshimselfto have everythingto lose fromthe capitalistregime and
everythingto gain fromits overthrow.Everythingto lose-which is to say, his
veryhumanity--and everythingto gain- thissame humanity.The proletarian
is, then,fromthe originsof industrialcapitalism,a figuretorn fromthe future
horizon of his own disappearance. He is literallythe prototypeof the universal
man of the future,the anticipatedtypeof the freeand autonomous man, of the
emancipated man, of the man who will have fullyrealized his human essence.
This essence lies in the two things that define man ontologically,as both a
productivebeing and a social being. He is also a historicalbeing. But as historical
changes are only conceivable against the ground of an invariantsubstrate,they
postulatean ontology,and the historyof men can be nothingbut the growthof
productiveforcesand the progressof the relationsof production.For Marx only
conceivesof man as homofaber: labor- the facultyof producing- is whatmakes
him man, and the consciousnesshe has of it is the importof his humanity.It
transformsthe simplebiological belongingto the human species into conscious-
ness of participatingin humankind,and thus makes of all productsof labor the
privilegedplace of collectiveliving.This is whythe social relationis the essence
of the individualas Gattungswesen (species-being),and why as well, in turn,all
social relationsare, in the lastinstance,reduced to relationsof production.These

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JosephBeuys,or The Last oftheProletarians 53

latter will only be free and autonomous with the advent of the classless and
stateless society,the communistsociety of which the proletariatis the avant-
garde. In the meantimethe class strugglewillbe the order,sincethe proletariatis
exploitedand alienated by the capitalistregimeto whichit is subjected,or, to put
it another way,since theproletarian,dispossessedof his human essence by social
relationsof productionwhichadmit of nothingbut the regime of privateprop-
erty,stillneeds to reappropriateit throughstruggle.
Even whilealready being, in anticipation,the typeor prototypeof man-in-
general, the proletarian suffersunder the yoke of capitalism from being ex-
ploitedand alienated. Exploitation,whichconsistsin the factthatsurplusvalue is
extractedfromthe unpaid labor time that the workeris constrainedto offerto
the owner of the means of productionwho employshim,is a damage he sustains,
a damage whicha regroupingof the workingforces- as in unionization- could
make amends for or lessen, to a certaindegree. But alienation is not a damage
thatcan be made up for;it is a wrongthatmustbe righted.3It derivesfromthe
nature of the transactionbetween wageworkerand employer meeting on the
capitalistlabor market,as ifeach were in possessionof a ware in whichthe other
is interested,in order to proceed to theirexchange. The capitalistoffersa sal-
ary and the worker his labor power. Now labor power- Arbeitskraft or
Arbeitsvermogen--is, par excellence, that which defines or will define man as
productive and social being, universal man in his essence. To have to sell his
being as ifit were a belongingis preciselywhatalienateshomofaber and makesthe
workerintoa proletarian.All languagesdistinguishthe auxiliaryverbstobeand to
have; theseare verbsthatdo not translateone into the other. But thisis whatthe
regime of private propertypretends to do where it treats labor power as a
commodity,"neither more nor less than sugar," Marx says. Therein rests the
irreparablewrongthatMarx calls alienationand thatonlytheabolitionof private
ownershipof the means of production could right.
To say thatthe proletariansuffersfroma confusionbetween two auxiliary
verbs might seem rather light in view of what the workingclass has had to
endure. Marx is much more concrete: it's his life that the workeralienates in
sellinghis labor power to the capitalist;it's his muscularand cerebral forcethat
he cedes to him; his blood that he spillsfor him; his skin that he wears out; his
fleshthathe exhausts.But thisloss followsfromexploitation;it does not involvea
change of essence. Afterall, the salarythathis boss payshimallows the workerto
reconstitutehis lost energies; it is even exactlycalculated fora reproductionof
his labor power to make up forthe expenditure.It is true thatthe workerwears
himselfout, but, like everyoneelse, he is subjected to the irreversiblemarch of
time. It is also true that he gives away more time--labor time, that is, sole

3. For the differencebetweena damageand a wrong,see Jean-FrangisLyotard,Le differend,

Paris,
Editions de Minuit, 1983, pp. 18ff(forthcomingin English translation,Minneapolis, Minnesota
UniversityPress).

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54 OCTOBER

measure of the value of the commoditieshe produces- thanhe receivesback in

the formof wages,but thisis preciselybecause he is exploited. Once again, there
is no case for calling that alienation.
In fact,the Hegelian concept of alienationdisappears fromthe writingsof
Marx after the manuscriptsof 1844. As for that of labor power, it does not
appear before 1865, in Wages,Prices,and Profit.In the firsteditionof Wage-Labor
and Capital,whichdates from1849, it is not his labor power thatthe wageworker
sells to the capitalist,but his labor itself.It is only in the posthumousedition of
1891, amended by Engels (who accounts forit in the preface)to take account of
the theoreticaladvances of Capital, that labor power takes the place of labor.
This last conception is hard to support as such-unless one understandsthat
Marx rehabilitatesit under the table- withoutthe conceptof alienation,at least
the ontologicaland dialecticalsense thatthisconcept carriesand whichremains
fromone end to the otheressentialto Marxistthought,lestone see the essential
protagonistof the class struggle,the proletarian,vanish like a ghost. The 1849
conception was, moreover, more logical and more exact: the measure of ex-
change value being labor, and the measure of labor being time, it is obviously
time thatthe capitalisttreatsas commodityand "measures withthe clock, as he
measures sugar witha scale." But once the concept of alienation is abandoned,
whetherit be his labor or his labor time that the wageworkersells,no wrong is
done him. He suffersthe injury that is exploitation,but that is reparable. A
betterdistributive justice could render exploitationtolerable,and it is thisthat
has effectively occurred in the Western democracies. To justifythe revolution
and to writethe abolition of capitalismonto the politicalagenda, it is necessary
thatthe wageworkersuffera wrongthataffectshim in his human essence. If it is
his labor power that he sells, if he is forced to part with the very thing that
constituteshim in his humanity,thenhe suffersthiswrong,then he is a proletar-
ian and not simplya salaried worker,thenthiswrongmustbe rightedforhim to
reappropriatehis essence, his labor power. (The word "appropriation" betrays
the embarrassmentof a Marx caughtin the trapof his own thoughtand forcedto
treat the essence of homofaber in theoryin the same manner as the capitalist
treatsit in practice.)4

4. The interpretationI have offeredof alienationthusconflatestwo separate momentsof Marx's

thoughtin a way thatsuggeststhat it is essentialforthe "romantic" Marx to survivein between the
linesof the later,"scientific"Marx, in order to uphold the emancipatoryhorizonof Marxism.Only if
the concept of labor power (i.e., the ability to deliver work at large, what Marx calls "simple,
homogeneous,general,and abstractlabor") is giventhe same ontologicalmeaning-defining man in
his essence as a species-being-as, in the manuscriptsof 1844, the concepts of life-activity, productive
can it be said that:"From the relationof alienated labor to privatepropertyit also
life,i.e., species-life,
followsthat the emancipationof societyfromprivate property,fromservitude,takes the political
form of the emancipationof the workers,not in the sense that only the latter's emancipation is
involved,but because this emancipationincludes the emancipationof humanityas a whole" (Karl
Marx, Early Writings, trans.and ed. T. B. Bottomore,New York, McGraw Hill, 1964, p. 132).

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JosephBeuys,or The Last oftheProletarians 55

Whetherthe messianicimportwas religious,political,or culturalin color-

ation,an enormouspartof modernart and all itsutopiashave demanded thatthe
wrongdone to the proletariatbe righted.In thusinsistingthatthe labor power of
man-in-general (the individualas Gattungswesen) be liberatedand "dis-alienated,"
they have focused on the sense in which man has this power in himself,yet
remainsdispossessedto the extent,precisely,thathe can merelyhave it,whereas
it constituteshim, or will constitutehim, in his being, in his belonging,at once
unique and universal,to humankind.It is to thisdemand thatmodern or avant-
garde artists(those at least who fullyclaimed those titles) have testified,by
incarnatingtheproletarian.Obviouslywhatis at stakehere has nothingto do with
certainideological alignmentsby artistswithproletarianpositions- thisexisted,
but remainsthe exception-and is not in contradictionwiththe objective eco-
nomicsituationof artists,whichis more akin to thatof a smallentrepreneurthan
to that of a wageworker. But subjectivelyspeaking the modern artist is the
proletarianpar excellence,because the regimeof privatepropertyforceshim to
place on theart marketthingswhichwillbe treatedas commodities,but which,in
order to have an aesthetic value, must be productionsand concretionsof his
labor power and, if possible,of nothingelse. Even the bourgeois conception of
art "reifies"the work(via the market)on the one hand and, on the other,judges
it (via the aesthetic)for the way that it manifeststhisfacultyof producingvalue,
which,in order to be authentic,mustbe unique to the artistand mustpromise
value for all, and thus must have its seat in the very nature of the artistas
individualhuman-in-general.
Marx calls thisuniversalfacultyof producingvalue laborpower;Beuys calls
it creativity.Beuys is certainlynot the firstto give it thisname, farfromit. He is
more like the lastto be able to do it withconviction.Beuys'sart,his discourse,his
attitude,and above all the two faces presented by his persona-the suffering
face and the utopian face--constitute the swan song of creativity,the most
powerfulof the modernmyths.Perched on a thresholdthathe called "the end of
modernity,"he was in effectits doorman, but the postmodernityonto whichhe
hoped to open the door was as black as his own death. For this tragic and
optimisticJanusis above all pathetic;both his facesare turnedbackward,toward
the modernitythat he brings to a close. It could not be otherwise,since that
whichBeuys promisedby creativityis whatall of artisticmodernitynever ceased
to promise,to hope for, to invoke as the emancipatoryhorizon of its achieve-
ment. "Everyone is an artist." Rimbaud already said it and Novalis already
thoughtit long ago. The studentsof 1968, in Paris, in California,and gathered
around Beuysin Dusseldorf,proclaimeditonce again and wroteit on the walls.It
alwaysmeant,and thissince the German romantics:"power to the imagination."
It has neverbecome a reality,at least not in thatsense. But all thatthe nineteenth
and twentiethcenturieshave impliedforthe willto emancipationand the desire
for dis-alienationhas always meant: everyone is an artist,but the masses don't
have the power to actualize thispotentialbecause theyare oppressed,alienated,

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 56 OCTOBER

and exploited; only those few,whom we stupidlycall professionalartists,know

thatin realitytheirvocationis to incarnatethisunactualizedpotential.Hence the
two faces of modernity,of which it is Beuys's patheticgrandeur to have worn
both: the public, revolutionary,and pedagogical face, the one thatis convinced
that an adequate teaching will liberate creativity;and the secret, insane, and
rebelliousface,the one thatclaimsthatcreativity is alreadyof thisworldprecisely
therewhereit lies fallowand in waiting,crude and savage: in the artof madmen,
children,and primitives.If he had lived in the Germanyof Weimar,Beuyscould
have been at one and the same time Gropius and Beckmann,or perhaps a Klee
amended by his teacher Lehmbruck.

ofFineArts,Disseldorf
Beuys.Academy
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JosephBeuys,or The Last oftheProletarians 57

ClearlyMarx does not slip out of the mythicfabricof modernity;he is even

one of the most formidableof its craftsmen.Creativityis to the cultural field
what labor power is to the fieldof political economy. The two fieldsimbricate
throughoutthe course of modernity,and in all possible manners.With Beuys,
this is why the translationattemptedhere is so easy- the two fieldsprecisely
overlap-and thisis whatsignalsto us thattheirdialecticis over. For, duringthe
lastdecade of his lifeand work,Beuysconstructedan actual politicaleconomyon
which he hoped to found his theoryof social sculpture.Its anchor point was, of
course, creativity,whichis a universalfacultyof man, and even the singularone
that makes him man. "Der Mensch ist das kreativeWesen," Beuys said, as if
echoing Marx. Like labor power, but unlike talent-a notion on whichclassical
aestheticsis based- creativityis the potential of each and every one, and it
precedes the divisionof labor: being the capacityto produce, in general. From
this it follows that everyone is an artistand that art is not a profession.All
productiveactivity,whetherof goods or of services,can be called art; creativityis
the true capital,and the exchange of goods is to the flowof creativitywithinthe
social body what the circulatorysystemis to the flow of vital forces in the
individualbody. (This is what the Honigpumpefromthe 1977 Documenta sym-
bolized.)5 In order that this utopia become realityand that creativitybe "dis-
alienated," goods, money included, must not be commodities. Money, called
"production capital," will thus be created from scratch by a central bank (it
embodies neithertime nor labor power) and distributeddemocratically.Once
placed in the hands of social agents, it would become "consumptioncapital," a
kindof paper moneywithno value but thatof representinga certainpurchasing-
power,a value thatit willlose in the course of the transactionbeforereturningto
the centralbank and being reinjectedinto the economic circuit.Beuys intended
in thisway to neutralizethe privateownershipof the means of production.6This
utopia is pretty,naive, and hardlyoriginal. It has Fourieristand Proudhonnist
overtones, and Marx had already denounced somethingsimilar proposed by
JohnGray. It is difficultto see more than an involuntarycaricatureof numerous
brokenpromisesof modernityin it,a slightlygrotesque farcewithnothingbut a

5. Which suggeststhat,if Beuys's "electricitytheory" refersback to Faraday, his "physiology"

refersback to Harvey (as does his "medicine" to Paracelsus). But to translatethe economic flowof
merchandiseinto the image of the blood circulationis, again, verymuch a nineteenth-century idea.
6. See Caroline Tisdall, JosephBeuys,New York, The Solomon R. GuggenheimMuseum, 1979,
p. 264. From Tisdall's account, it is not, however,absolutelyclear to what extent Beuys is indebted
forhis politicaleconomyto his formerstudentand secretary,JohannesStdittgen.His own account is
best expressed in the "Munich discourse": "CAPITAL is not money(means of production);CAPI-
TAL is abilityand the productof ability.Here thereappear furtherproofsof the idea that'Everyone
is an Artist,'proofsof the factthatabilityreallyis a lever. Money is not an economic value! . . . That
approach willlogicallydevelop the social totality,takingas itsstarting-point the creativehuman being
as the creatorof the world,and proceeding fromfreedomby way of law to new economic laws and a
creditsystemfor the public good" (Joseph Beuys, "Talking about One's Own Country:Germany,"
in In Memoriam JosephBeuys:Obituaries,Essays,Speeches,Bonn, Inter Nationes, 1986, pp. 50-51).

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 58 OCTOBER

retrospectivemeaning.The last of the proletarianshas triedto rightthe wrong

of his condition,whichis thatof artistsand of everyman,by mappingthe hopes
and propheciesof the modern culturalfieldonto the fieldof politicaleconomy,
in order to revivethem.But he has not seen thatiftheyin factfinda partof their
historicaltruththere, it is in the past tense, in termsof the translationsmade
possible by thismapping,and not in the futuretense,in termsof the emancipa-
tion it was theproletarian'svocation to promise.
There remainsthe sufferingof the proletarianand the patheticironythat
means thatifthe promiseof emancipationshouldbe abandoned, the characterof
the proletarian would vanish. Beuys, the sculptor,knew how, with pain and
humoralike, to workout the contradictionsthatBeuys,the charlataneconomist,
pretended with utter seriousnessto dissolve. The talented artistdidn't do the
same thingas the prophetof creativity.When it is convincing,his workavows,it

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JosephBeuys,or The Last oftheProletarians 59

promisesnothing.Until the new order arrives,money is capital, not creativity.

Everyone has not become an artist,and the art market continues to treat as
commoditiesthe productionsexuded by the "creativity"of thoseit recognizesas
professionalartists.At thislevel Beuys was coddled: alienated, perhaps,but not
exploited. Raum 90.000 DM, which is the titleof an environmentproduced in
1981, statesits own price.7Strewnover the room, fiveold, rusteddrums,once
having contained various industrialchemical products,warn of the ecological
damages and wrongswroughtby industry(one of themhad containedfluorocar-

7. in Cologne.A photo-album
Firstshownat theGalerieJ6llenbeck wassubsequently
produced,
witha shortpresentationtextbySarenco(JosephBeuys,Raum90.000DM, Milan,Factotummulthi-
pla, 1982).

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bon, the pollutantresponsiblefordestroyingthe ozone layer),and testifyto the

consumptionof use value. Useless and used-up,the drumswill be treatednone-
theless as precious objects by the commercialgallerythat shows them, wholly
aware of their exchange value. But by arrangingthem as unaestheticallyas
possible (theydon't even make an interestingformalconfiguration),Beuys suc-
ceeds in makingtheirpresence incongruousand frustrating. They are different
sizes and filledto differentlevels withscraps of aluminumslag that have been
fused together.One of themoverflows,and a ladle is attachedto the mound of
debris. The staging is allegorical, and the allegory is pessimistic:under the
conditions of industrialcapitalism(the containers),artists'creativity(the con-
tents)can onlycongeal intocommoditiesand become alienatedin theirexchange
value. The artistis supposed to draw fromthe well of his labor power, but the
alchemy that turns it into gold for the dealer leaves him nothing but slag
("coagulated labor-time,"Marx would say).
In a corner of the room, facing this arrangement,is crammed a large
copper bathtubfilledto the brimwitha solutionof sulfuricacid. This is another
allegoryof the artist,and this time the well is alive. Under the conditionsof a
renewal (the container: the theme of the bathtub has autobiographicalreso-
nances of baptismand rebirthwithinBeuys's work),artists'creativity(the con-

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 ::i:_:-~_,_s-_,-___:-,,-',--
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tents:as corrosiveas the originalcontentsof the drumswas polluting)preserves

its subversivepotential.But the containeris itselfcontained,the bathtubis not
bare but enveloped by a thicklayerof terracotta thatseems to protectit and to
hide in the depths of its material some strangepouches that the sculptorhas
modelled as iftheywere the pocketsof a beggar'swallet,or of theartist'sfamous
vest. The dialecticof containedcontainers(of conditioningconditions)does not
stop there,and, even overflowingwithcorrosivelabor power, the bathtubdoes
not escape exchange value. Gettingthejump on the dealer, Beuys gouged the
price of the workinto the still-dampclay: 90.000 DM. Illusion has no foothold.
Time gets the lastword. Beuys,who understoodmaterialslike no one else, knew
that,in drying,the clay would contractand would end by cracking.Whetherby
chance or bydesign,it happened thatone of the fissureshas neatlyslicedthrough
the price and separated the nine from the zeros, symbolicallycanceling the
monetaryvalue of the work.The bathtubof creativity breaksout of itssheathof
reificationand the artiststripsoffhis old-man'scloak, ready to bear the novices
of a Beuysianutopia to the baptismalfont.The ensembleis more ridiculousthan
sublime and, formally,only semiconvincing.To the leftof the bathtub,negli-
gentlypinned to the wall,a collage of notes and sketchesmountedbetweentwo
sheets of glass pretendsto explain the work and, of course, explains nothing.

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62 OCTOBER

Time always has the last word, in effect,and time cracks the statuesand
corrodes utopia more surelythan sulfuricacid. Creativityhas nothingsubversive
left;that mythis dated. Raum 90.000 DM subscribesto it, but also exposes its
extremevulnerability, witnessto the hope of theproletarianbut attestingas well
the comic aspect of thischaracter.With Beuys gone, and the concretionsof his
talent (and not of his creativity)more than ever fetishizedby a necrophilicart
market,timewilldecide ifhis sculptureshould survivethe ruinof socialsculpture,
thismodern Kunstwollenthat he ignitedone last time.
In counterpointto Joseph Beuys,one is temptedto place Andy Warhol, to
oppose to the vitalismand populism of the former,the morbidezzaand worldli-
ness of the latter.In the art of the past twentyyears,onlyWarhol equals Beuys in
legend-value--that is, media-value--and the shadow of both of them hovers
equally over theart of the youngergeneration.But Beuysis a hero and Warhol is
a star. The firsthad to immolate himselfon a stage dating from the Comedie
humaine,and his aestheticis theatrical,confusingart and lifein the same authen-
ticity.He lived and died, a perfectlycast characterof bohemia. The second died
as thoughby mistake,afterhavingsurvived,as thoughby necessity,an assassina-
tionattempt,made useless by the factthatall the frontpages were alreadytaken
up, on thatday, by the real assassinationof Robert Kennedy. His lifeand his art
were projectionsof the same life-style, and hisaestheticis thatof the simulacrum.
Beuys's art demands a myth originand a historicaltelos, that of Warhol the
of
fictionof the eternalreturnand the steadystateof posthistory.For one, capital-
ism remained the culturalhorizon to leave behind; for the other, it was simply
nature. Beuys,like Marx a bourgeois German,wanted to incarnatethe proletar-
ian; Warhol, an American immigrantof working-classorigins,wanted to be a
machine.At the centerof all theseoppositionsis the factthatBeuys based art on
will and thus on a principleof production,and Warhol on desire and thus on a
principleof consumption;that Beuys believed in creativityand Warhol did not;
and thatforBeuysartwas labor whileforWarhol itwas commerce.Nevertheless,
labor and commercehave thisin common: the domain of these notionsis thatof
politicaleconomy.Indeed politicaleconomyis divided up by theseconceptsthat,
beyond this field,also divide up the anthropologicalone: either labor or ex-
change is primaryand defines the social essence of man. Either historyor
structure.The opposition not only opposes Marxist to liberal economics; it
traversesall the human sciences and colors them with economism. That art is
available to be decoded by means of politicaleconomy does not mean that it is
absorbed into it. That, with Beuys and Warhol, art is decoded so obviouslyby
politicaleconomywould mean insteadthatthe timehas come to decode the code
ratherthan to decode messages by means of it,and thateconomic values--and
the verynotion of value -are nothingbut a dated translation,neitherthe most
naturalnor the most fruitful,of what we mustcontinue to call, lackinga better
term,aestheticjudgment.

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