In the beginning of the film Joseph Beuys says that when enters a room, he wants to know what internal questions the people around are asking themselves. Contact has successfully been made: director Andres Veiel couldn’t have found a more elegant introduction. He introduces us to an artist that many just remember as a man with the “fat corner.” What Veiel is most interested in are the timeless questions that still occupy us today.

The performance artist disturbed and provoked audiences in the 60s and 70s. It’s a lot of fun to see what kind of discussions he triggered in the country back then. Beuys believed: “you have to close yourself off” – not just from yourself. His haggard face under the obligatory hat symbolizes that. As a professor in the art academy in Düsseldorf, he supervised much more students than his colleagues did voluntarily and had to deal with the state government because of it too. He planted 5000 oak trees as part of the 7th documenta in Kassel. The last tree was planted there after his death in 1986. Veiel went through 400 hours of video material, 300 hours of audio, and 20,000 photos. The film’s biggest strength is that it mostly relies on the power of his archives. The two editors Stephan Krumbiegel and Olaf Voigländer sort through the material, making a kind of moving image contact arc. Connections are made and single performances are focused on and visually celebrated. BEUYS is a portrait of a restless, full-time artist: at his studio, at his events, and as a funny conversationalist.

Beuys‘ message was quite simple: every person is an artist; a political art term meaning every person has the ability to actively shape society. That can be seen in Beuys’ art, him dealing with the secret power of money, and him attempting to become a politician in the new green party in the 80s. But in the end it becomes clear what really drove Beuys: his recurring contention with a never healing wound. The crack that’s created when the ratio meets the institution. Working yourself into the ground in a society that wants to prescribe how we should live and behave. The wound hasn’t healed to this day.

An artist documentary didn’t have a shot at winning the Golden Bear. But Andres Veiel’s examination of the man with the hat, fur, and fat corner is very current.

Simone Dobmeier

Translation: Elinor Lewy