Book Sectionhttps://doi.org/10.37050/ci-11_09
For the duration of the one hundred days of the documenta 6 in 1977, Joseph Beuys made honey flow from this slightly awkward pit, the well of a destructive esprit d’escalier, this site of a sovereignty evacuated many times over. Beuys, that is, installed his fable of the bees at a purposefully vacuous palace where courtly culture had surrendered to the modern museum, but more specifically even, at the supplemental, feigned, then bombed-out site of popular sovereignty.
Keywords: Plasticity; Sculpture; Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz - Beuys, Joseph; Art; Totality; Society
Rights: © by the author(s). This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Part of De/Constituting Wholes Containing:
[Frontmatter] /
Beginnings: Constituting Wholes, Haunting, Plasticity / Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Sexual Ghosts and the Whole of History: Queer Historiography, Post-Slavery Subjectivities, and Sadomasochism in Isaac Julien’s The Attendant / Volker Woltersdorff
Things I Learned from the Book of Ruth: Diasporic Reading of Queer Conversions / Ruth Preser
Claims of Existence between Biopolitics and Thanatopolitics / Eirini Avramopoulou
Differently Queer: Temporality, Aesthetics, and Sexuality in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolioand Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli / Manuele Gragnolati
Warburg’s Ghost: On Literary Atlases and the ‘Anatopic’ Shift of a Cartographic Object / Filippo Trentin
Hegel and the Ad-venture of the Totality / Jamila M.H. Mascat
The Innate Plasticity of Bodies and Minds: Integrating Models of Genetic Determination and Environmental Formation / Robert Meunier, Valentine Reynaud
Pumping Honey: Joseph Beuys at the documenta 6
An Eclipse of the Screen: Jorge Semprún’s Scripts for Alain Resnais / Marcus Coelen
[Backmatter] /
Title
Pumping Honey
Subtitle
Joseph Beuys at the documenta 6
Author(s)
Arnd Wedemeyer
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-11_09
Description
For the duration of the one hundred days of the documenta 6 in 1977, Joseph Beuys made honey flow from this slightly awkward pit, the well of a destructive esprit d’escalier, this site of a sovereignty evacuated many times over. Beuys, that is, installed his fable of the bees at a purposefully vacuous palace where courtly culture had surrendered to the modern museum, but more specifically even, at the supplemental, feigned, then bombed-out site of popular sovereignty.
Is Part Of
De/Constituting Wholes
Place
Vienna
Publisher
Turia + Kant
Date
2017
Subject
Plasticity
Sculpture
Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz - Beuys, Joseph
Art
Totality
Society
Rights
© by the author(s)
This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Bibliographic Citation
Arnd Wedemeyer, ‘Pumping Honey: Joseph Beuys at the documenta 6’, in De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Manuele Gragnolati, Cultural Inquiry, 11 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2017), pp. 177–214 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-11_09>
Language
en-GB
page start
177
page end
214
Source
De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Manuele Gragnolati, Cultural Inquiry, 11 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2017), pp. 177–214
Format
application/pdf

References

  • Beuys, Joseph, Das Geheimnis der Knospe zarter Hülle. Texte 1941–1986, ed. by Eva Beuys (Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 2000)
  • Bastian, Heiner, ed., Joseph Beuys, The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland (Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 1988)
  • Baumgartner, Marcel, Kasper König, and Laszlo Glozer (eds), Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939 (Cologne: DuMont, 1981)
  • Beuys, Joseph, ‘Eintritt in ein Lebewesen’, in Soziale Plastik, ed. by Harlan, Rappmann, and Schata, pp. 123–28
  • Beuys, Joseph, The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland, ed. by Caroline Tisdall (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1974)
  • Beuys, Joseph, ‘Interview’, Rheinische Bienenzeitung, 126.12 (1975), pp. 373–77
  • Beuys, Joseph, ‘Das System nährt den Terrorismus am Busen’, in Talk show der documenta 6 (= Kunstforum, 21 (1977)) pp. 201–11
  • Beuys, Joseph, ‘Introduction’, in Joseph Beuys and Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979)
  • Beuys, Joseph, Honey Is Flowing in All Directions, ed. by Klaus Staeck (Göttingen: Steidl, 1997)
  • Beuys, Joseph and Heinrich Böll, ‘Manifesto for a Free International University (FIU)’, in Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America. Writings by and Interviews with the Artist, ed. by Carin Kuoni (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), pp. 129–34
  • Bishop, Claire, ed., Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2006)
  • Blume, Eugen and Catherine Nichols (eds), Beuys. Die Revolution sind wir (Göttingen: Steidl, 2008)
  • Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by Simon Pleasance, Fronza Woods, and Mathieu Copeland (Dijon: Presses du réel, 2002)
  • Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001)
  • Boym, Svetlana, Architecture of the Off-Modern (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008)
  • Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., ‘Formalism and Historicity: Changing Concepts in American and European Art since 1945’, in Europe in the Seventies: Aspects of Recent Art, ed. by Anne Rorimer (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1977), pp. 83–111, reprinted as ‘Formalism and Historicity’, in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Formalism and Historicity: Models and Methods in Twentieth-Century Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), pp. 1–87
  • Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., ‘Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol, Preliminary Notes for a Critique’, Artforum, 18.5 (January 1980), pp. 35–43, now in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 41–64
  • Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., ‘Reconsidering Joseph Beuys, Once Again’, in Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy, ed. by Gene Ray and Lukas Beckmann (New York: Distributed Art Publishers; Sarasota: John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 2001), pp. 75–89
  • Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., Jean-François Chevrier, and Catherine David, ‘Joseph Beuys and Surrealism, Roundtable’, in Joseph Beuys, ed. by Mesch and Michely, pp. 320–23
  • Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelsen, ‘Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim’, October, 12 (Spring 1980), pp. 3–21<https://doi.org/10.2307/778572>
  • Bußmann, Karl and Kasper König (eds.), Skulptur: Ausstellung in Münster. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Schloßgarten, Universität, Aasee, 3.7–13.11.1977 (Münster: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, 1977)
  • Bürger, Peter, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974)
  • Bürger, Peter, Zur Kritik der idealistischen Ästhetik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983)
  • Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. by Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)
  • Bürger, Peter, ‘Der Alltag, die Allegorie und die Avantgarde. Bemerkungen mit Rücksicht auf Joseph Beuys’, in Postmoderne: Alltag, Allegorie und Avantgarde, ed. by Christa Bürger and Peter Bürger (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 196–212
  • Bürger, Peter, ‘Der Avantgardist nach dem Ende der Avantgarden: Joseph Beuys’, in Peter Bürger, Das Altern der Moderne. Schriften zur bildenden Kunst (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 154–70
  • Bürger, Peter, ‘Joseph Beuys, das Material und der Tod’, in Peter Bürger, Nach der Avantgarde (Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2014)
  • Crimp, Douglas, On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993)
  • Dean, Tacita, Darmstädter Werkblock (Göttingen: Steidl, 2008)
  • Derrida, Jacques, ‘Le temps des Adieux: Heidegger (lu par) Hegel (lu par) Malabou’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 188.1 (1998), pp. 3–47, in English as Jacques Derrida, ‘A Time for Farewells: Heidegger (Read by) Hegel (Read by) Malabou’, trans. by Joseph D. Cohen, in Malabou, The Future of Hegel, pp. vii–xlvii
  • Eckhart, Meister, ‘Liber “Benedictus”. Daz Buoch der goetlîchen Troestunge’, in Werke II, ed. by Niklaus Largier (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker-Verlag, 1993), pp. 232–333
  • Elkins, James and Harper Montgomery (eds), Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013)
  • Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (eds.), Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004)
  • Foster, Hal, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983)
  • Glozer, Laszlo, ‘Skulpturen für eine Stadt’, in Skulptur, ed. by Bußmann and König, pp. 231–49
  • Glozer, Laszlo, Joseph Beuys, ‘Zeige deine Wunde’ (Munich: Schellmann & Klüser, 1976)
  • Harlan, Volker, Rainer Rappmann, and Peter Schata (eds), Plastik. Materialien zu Joseph Beuys, 2nd edn (Achberg: Achberger Verlagsanstalt, 1980)
  • Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Werke in zwanzig Bänden (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1969–71), xiv: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II, in English as Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art I, trans. by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975)
  • Ingrao, Charles W., The Hessian Mercenary State: Ideas, Institutions, and Reform under Frederick II, 1760–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511528873>
  • Joachimides, Christos, ed., Art into Society, Society into Art: Seven German Artists (London: ICA, 1974)
  • Joachimides, Christos, ed., Joseph Beuys: Richtkräfte (Berlin: Neue Nationalgalerie / Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1977)
  • Kimpel, Harald, Documenta. Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Cologne: DuMont, 1997)
  • Kraushaar, Wolfgang, ed., Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, 2 vols (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006)
  • Krauss, Rosalind, ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, October, 8 (Spring 1979), pp. 30–44 <https://doi.org/10.2307/778224>
  • Krauss, Rosalind, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985)
  • Krauss, Rosalind, ‘No to… Joseph Beuys’, in Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide (New York: Zone Books, 1997), pp. 143–46
  • Krauss, Rosalind, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000)
  • Lee, Pamela M., Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)
  • Linnebach, Andrea, Das Museum der Aufklärung und sein Publikum. Kunsthaus und Museum Fridericianum in Kassel im Kontext des historischen Besucherbuches (1769–1796) (Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2014)
  • Loers, Veit and Peter Witzmann (eds), Joseph Beuys: Documenta, Arbeit (Kassel: Museum Fridericianum, 1993)
  • Luckow, Dirk, Joseph Beuys und die amerikanische Anti Form-Kunst Einfluss und
  • Lüdke, Martin, ed., ‘Theorie der Avantgarde’. Antworten auf Peter Bürgers Bestimmung von Kunst und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976)
  • Macho, Thomas, ‘Wer ist wir? Tiere im Werk von Joseph Beuys’, in Beuys. Die Revolution sind wir, ed. by Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols (Göttingen: Steidl, 2008), pp. 338–39
  • Malabou, Catherine, L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (Paris: Vrin, 1996), in English as Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic, trans. by Lisabeth During (London: Routledge, 2005)
  • Malabou, Catherine, ‘Ouverture: Le vœu de plasticité’, in Plasticité , ed. by Catherine Malabou (Paris: Léo Scheer, 2000), pp. 6–25
  • Malabou, Catherine, Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004)
  • Malabou, Catherine, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, trans. by Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008)
  • Mauthner, Fritz, Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Neue Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, vol. II (Munich: Georg Müller, 2010)
  • Michaud, Eric, ‘The End of Art According to Beuys’, trans. by Rosalind Krauss, October, 45 (Summer 1988), pp. 36–46 <https://doi.org/10.2307/779042>
  • Nietzsche, Friedrich, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: de Gruyter, 1988), iv: Also sprach Zarathus- tra, in English as Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. and trans. by Adrian del Caro; ed. and introduction by Robert Pippin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  • Papapetros, Spyros and Julian Rose (eds), Retracing the Expanded Field: Encounters between Art and Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014)
  • Rancieère, Jacques, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. by Steven Corcoran (Cambridge: Polity, 2009)
  • Rancière, Jacques, La mésentente: Politique et philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1995), in English as Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. by Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)
  • Rancière, Jacques, Le partage du sensible: Esthétique et politique (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000) <https://doi.org/10.3917/lafab.ranci.2000.01>
  • Rancière, Jacques, Malaise dans l’esthétique (Paris: Galilée, 2004)
  • Rancière, Jacques, Chroniques des temps consensuels (Paris: Seuil, 2005)
  • Rancière, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. by Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2006)
  • Rancière, Jacques, Chronicles of Consensual Times, trans. by Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum, 2010)
  • Rappmann, Harlan, and Schata, ‘Interview with Joseph Beuys’, in Soziale Plastik pp. 10–25
  • Rattemeyer, Volker and Renate Petzinger, ‘Pars pro toto: Die Geschichte der Documenta am Beispiel des Treppenhauses des Friedericianums’, Kunstforum, 90 (1987), pp. 334–56
  • Ruby, Sigrid, ‘Wir hatten von den Künstlern gelernt… Ein Interview mit Laszlo Glozer’, Texte zur Kunst, 50 (June 2003), pp. 96–105
  • Rübel, Dietmar, Plastizität. Eine Kunstgeschichte des Veränderlichen (Munich: Silke Schreiber, 2012)
  • Schellmann, Jörg and Bernd Klüser, ‘Fragen an Joseph Beuys’, in Joseph Beuys. Die Multiples, ed. by Jörg Schellmann, 7th edn (Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 1997), pp. 9–28
  • Schneckenburger, Manfred, ed., Documenta 6, vol. 1: Malerei, Plastik, Performance (Kassel: P. Dierichs, 1977)
  • Schulz, Heribert, Joseph Beuys und der Schwan (Düsseldorf: Richter & Fey, 2012)
  • Sheehan, James J., Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
  • Steiner, Rudolf, ‘Über das Wesen der Bienen’, in Rudolf Steiner, Gesamtausgabe, B: Vorträge, III: Vorträge und Kurse zu einzelnen Lebensgebieten, Vorträge für die Arbeiter am Goetheanumbau, 5: Mensch und Welt: das Wirken des Geistes in der Natur. Über die Bienen: fünfzehn Vorträge, gehalten vor den Arbeitern am Goetheanumbau in Dornach vom 8. Oktober bis 22. Dezember 1923, ed. by Paul Gerhard Bellmann (Dornach: Verlag der Rudolf-Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1965), pp. 128–261
  • Strzelecki, Carmen and Jörg Streichert (eds), Best Kunst. Das Leben von Kaspar König in 15 Ausstellungen (Cologne: Strzelecki Books, 2016)
  • Szeemann, Harald, ‘Der lange Marsch zum Beuysnobiscum’, in Beuysnobiscum, ed. by Szeemann, pp. 9–14
  • Szeemann, Harald and Susanne Haeni (eds), Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk: Europäische Utopien seit 1800 (Aarau: Sauerländer, 1983)
  • Voigt, Kirsten Claudia, ‘Plastisches Bild’, in Beuysnobiscum, ed. by Harald Szeemann (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2008), pp. 282–85
  • Voigt, Kirsten Claudia, ‘“Gib mir Honig”. Beuys liest Nietzsche’, in Joseph Beuys. Parallelprozesse: Archäologie einer künstlerischen Praxis, ed. by Ulrich Müller (Munich: Hirmer, 2012), pp. 52–66
  • Voigt, Kirsten Claudia, Friedrich Nietzsche und Joseph Beuys. Das autopoietische Subjekt. Von der Artistenmetaphysik zur Freiheitswissenschaft (Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 2016)
  • Wackernagel, Wolfgang, Ymagine denudari. Ethique de l’image et métaphysique de l’abstraction chez Maître Eckhart (Paris: Vrin, 1991)
  • Wackernagel, Wolfgang, ‘Subimaginale Versenkung. Meister Eckharts Ethik der Bild-ergründenden Entbildung’, in Was ist ein Bild?, ed. by Gottfried Boehm (Munich: Fink, 2006), pp. 184–208
  • Wagner, Monika, Das Material der Kunst. Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne (Munich: Beck, 2001)
  • Waldvogel, Florian, Aspekte des Kuratorischen am Beispiel der Praxis von Kasper König (Munich: Silke Schreiber, 2016)
  • Wechselwirkung zwischen Beuys und Morris, Hesse, Nauman, Serra (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1998), in English an excerpt as ‘The Reception of Joseph Beuys in the USA, and Some of Its Cultural/Political and Artistic Assumptions’, in Joseph Beuys, ed. by Mesch and Michely, pp. 287–303
  • Weijers, Wouter, ‘Ablage: Über Joseph Beuys’ “Straßenbahnhaltestelle” im Kröller-Müller Museum’, in Joseph Beuys, ‘Straßenbahnhaltestelle’. Ein Monument für die Zukunft, ed. by Simone Scholten, Roland Mönig, and Guido de Werd (Kleve: Freundeskreis Museum Kurhaus und Koekkoek-Haus Kleve, 2000), pp. 112–35
  • de Duve, Thierry, Cousus de fil d’or. Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp (Villeurbanne: Art édition, 1990), in English as Thierry de Duve, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp, trans. by Rosalind Krauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012) <https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226922393.001.0001>
  • de Duve, Thierry, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)

Cite as: Arnd Wedemeyer, ‘Pumping Honey: Joseph Beuys at the documenta 6’, in De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Manuele Gragnolati, Cultural Inquiry, 11 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2017), pp. 177–214 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-11_09>