Transversality in the work of Joseph Beuys

Abstract

This year 2021 Joseph Beuys´ birth anniversary is being celebrated, which has lead to numerous revisions of the sculptor in many German cities through exhibitions and thematic texts (shamanism at Schloss Moyland Museum) or varied influences (democracy in Düsseldorf). Our article contributes to this current issue a methodology with which to approach to the artist from philosophy and the History of Art. From the first one, we regain Hegel´s dialectical pattern, which Novalis opened to a transcendentality and it is understood as the result of putting in action each polar pair, so that it generates a synthesis or third element, which we process as a work of art. From the History of Art we gather Beuys´ biggest contribution to it, Temperature, understanding it as derivative of the pair (heat/cold), duality in transit which describes the process a work of art is carried out with, such as (matter/material) or (life/death). We can conclude that this methodology crosses transversely all Beuys´ Theory of Sculpture, and can be seen as an attempt to transubstantiate it through the movement initiated about beuysian materials such as grease or chocolate in order to produce the art works.