Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

At the White Rabbit gallery there are a couple of paintings that are about Joseph Beuys coyote performance in New York years ago.  This reminded me of a seeing Beuys work in the 1980s at the National Gallery in Canberra.  I was fascinated at that time when I read the story behind the art.  Joseph Beuys is a German artist who while a member of a combat bomber in WW2 was shot down.  He told a story about being catapulted through the plane window and was found days later by nomadic Tartars.  They rubbed him in fat and wrapped him in felt in order to warm him up and treat his exposure and injuries.  That was the art work was about- fat, felt, earth and blood.

I found out recently that that didn't happen at all.  It was just a story...eyewitnesses say that Beuys was brought to a military hospital where he stayed for 3 weeks.  He had been recovered by a German search commando and there were no Tartars in the village at that time.

 

Does it matter that the event didn't happen?

I thinks that it's kind of more interesting that it didn't occur and all that art work resulted.