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2009 German Week
Organizer: Shanghai Times Square Exhibition Theme: Explanation:
Joseph Beuys, an important and controversial figure in Europe after World War II, inexhaustibly created a lot of works, performances and declarations, affecting and fostering all artists in a generation. He had made the differences of critics, completely changed the artists’ status and even aroused widespread controversies. His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics. Joseph Beuys used the idea of social sculpture to question the general artists’ works and concepts. He was against the unilateralization of art and believed that artistic media included not only physical material, but also psychological material. Human’s art education was his primary goal. He thought art needed to interact with various fields because an efficient and democratic society with the spirit of freedom, equality and humanity was really formed only when the arts could be included in all learning areas, living areas and social areas. The idea of social sculpture (Every human being is an artist.) also means a kind of responsibility. Everyone should take part in the construction and transformation of this society. Society connects with everyone, not only with artists.
What did Joseph Beuys, this controversial and influential German artist, take for us? What differences of art are after him? What connection does Joseph Beuys have with our world? All classical standards were out of order because Joseph Beuys broke the shackles of aesthetics. He detested and rejected the pursuit of artistic talent and aesthetic. Art disappeared in a lofty area, just as “God is dead” and art returned to earth. From then on, art can be all-round opening up to the world and accept all kinds of expressions.
Since then, art included everything, like the memory to be emphasized, equal treatment of past, present and future and harmonious coexistence of various styles. Therefore, "Extended definition of art" was regarded as an open process and an expansion of territory. Thus, it further perfected the democratic transformation of arts, continued to shorten the distance between art and society. The idea of "social sculpture" committed to future development of personal democratic art. Everyone had, more or less, a desire to express themselves in art and also had their rights to express themselves freely. According to "extended definition of art"，“absolute innovation” was substituted by "absolute ego". There was nothing for people to achieve except art’s characters of simpleness, originality, freedom and nature.
Civilization is still on the road of progress. Nowadays, a real, spontaneous and democratic art practice anywhere appears almost through all activities of mankind. Artists or creators who have been socialized combine the history and society into the material of art and also regard the creation in the social life as a kind of combination of various impression. What the artists need to do is to place the works in an area where they will encounter other people accidently without previous warning and understand. It emphasizes on artists’ feelings to society when they coexist with other people in the same place. By the intervention model of direct highlight of objects, materials, sound, color and behavior, they make the crowd focus on the objects so that it will act on the crowd. Artists always try to make the works as real as human nature because all is related with not only how we exist, but also how we feel and think. All works are not just for the commemoration of an event or person, don’t mourn for and celebrate anything. Art should give emphasis on its universality, impersonality, authenticity and social interaction without any center of power. It will let us understand our social position and also is organizing a free space of ego. Artists are in possession of what the nature bestows. The relationship between artists’ autonomy and society is integration rather not highlight, add or isolation, same as the words "I am looking how people appraise me" by Fei Xiaotong, one of China's finest and most prominent sociologists and anthropologists. Art will root in social issues and become a kind of instinct needs of life and survival, rather not for pure aesthetics. Every human being is an artist, and everyone can feel free in the world.
Exhibition Introduction: China-Germany Contemporary Art Exhibition with the theme of “Every human being is an artist” is an important new section in Germany Week this year. Today, people living in various cultures not only are restricted by many cultures during the growth process, but also interfere and create the cultures. Ultimately, in today’s world the culture which had been defined in terms of nation or nationality is being beyond the scope of nation or nationality to develop. A particular culture is no longer closely connected with some special crowd or geographic areas, but being accepted globally and becoming a part of world cultures. The exhibition’s origin is the “Every human being is an artist” said by German artist Joseph Beuys. By expanding definition of art as a start, it made a series of peaceful movements of culture revolutionary. Its aim is to create a new free, equal, caritative, democratic and opening human culture and bring out the largest basis possibility for mankind to enter an ideal society. Exhibition Form: Artists to be invited:
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