Andy Warhol - Joseph Beuys F.S. II 242 jpg
Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol standing in front of the "Joseph Beuys" artwork at an art gallery.

Joseph Beuys 242

Catalog Title: Joseph Beuys: State I (FS II.242)
Year: 1980/83
Size: 40 x 32"
Medium: Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board
Edition: 150, 36 AP, 9 PP, 45 individual TP not in portfolios, signed and numbered in pencil lower right.
Hidden

Joseph Beuys 242 by Andy Warhol is a screenprint from the artist’s Joseph Beuys complete portfolio, initiated in 1980. In the series, Warhol depicts art figure Joseph Beuys who, like Warhol, was a controversial and provocative artist, especially in his native land of Germany. Beuys had made a career of progressively expanding his definition of art, engaging in “happenings” and “actions,” mercurial scenes that were never intended to achieve any kind of permanence. Most famously, his performance piece How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, saw the artist, whose head was inexplicably covered in honey and gold leaf, literally carrying around a dead hare while traversing a gallery space partially inaccessible to an audience.

In a sense, Joseph Beuys was trying to do the opposite of Andy Warhol. With his bizarre performances and cryptic art pieces, he was trying to create new mythologies and move away from materialism, a materialism that Warhol freely played with. This tension between the two artists’ approach to art provides a compelling lens with which to view the latter’s depictions of the former.

Joseph Beuys 242 itself is fairly stark. Four productions of a highly contrasted and heavily shadowed photograph (fairly typical of Warhol’s photography of the time) sit atop a soft gradient of cyan. Within the photograph, Beuys wears his iconic fisherman’s vest and felt hat. His gaze is arresting, as the boundaries of the sclera of his eyes fade into the rest of his face and leave behind piercing pupils. His expression is neutral, indicating either indifference or deep pondering. His gaunt and Teutonic features make him seem almost alien, perhaps proper for an artist whose work inhabited the margins of intelligibility. At the same time, Warhol Warholizes Beuys, showing proper reverence for him like his other works-cum-shrines of celebrity, but also grounding him in the material world. In Joseph Beuys 242, Warhol makes Beuys graspable, almost approachable.

Video: Joseph Beuys meets Andy Warhol (1979, Hans Mayer gallery in Dusseldorf).

Video: Joseph Beuys – How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hair (1965, at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf).

Photo of Warhol and Beuys courtesy of Schellmannart.com.

Share this page:

Related Works