Joseph Beuys

haven't seen it but can you elaborate?

OK, first of all, I felt he deserved his own thread, as an important figure of the 20th century - he doesn't seem to have cropped up much.

For me, there was only one piece that I found really arresting and that was the one in which there were sleds pouring out the back of a VW bus. It was dynamic, energetic, beautiful in its own right and the story behind it was highly intriguing. Oh and the vitrines had their moments.

But I struggled with a lot of the rest of the exhib. I like his motif of fat and felt, but some of the symbolism seemed so clunky. I don't mind reading about artworks in order to enjoy them, but as art experiences go, I wondered about how interesting it was to be told that 'that cupboard is a mountain / that mirror is the sea' and so forth.

The politics bit seemed similarly cumbersome and dated to me - the bourgeous paintings juxtaposed with the down to earth products of the DDR - and kind of exemplified my ambivalence towards the show.

The blackboards and videos were interesting and clearly showed an amazing person at work.

I love artists who revel in the beauty of raw materials - e.g. the Anthony Caro downriver at Tate Britain - but I need to be convinced about Beuys. I should also say that I WANT to be convinced about him - so much I've read about him makes me smile - but this exhib didn't stimulate me anything like as much as I'd hoped.

I think the feeling of "there's something missing" is understandable. There is something missing, and that's Beuys himself. He was a cross between a shaman and a performance artist, and a lot of his work is just the trace of performances he made. Having been in his presence for a couple of hours (at a lecture held in Edinburgh, part of his Free International University) I can tell you that he really was a sort of Pied Piper, strongly charismatic, dressed in his odd waistcoat and hat, speaking quietly, making those indecipherable diagrams, linking art and politics, the mythical and the pragmatic, in one big spidery diagram. I don't expect to see any artist so thoroughly Christlike ever again. Maybe that's overstating it, but certainly he had something of the medieval mystic about him.

i wish i liked him more and wished i knew why i didnt

i like beuysboys

Anthony expressed succintly what i was trying to say in my initial post.

Momus is right that there was something missing. The curators obviously tried to convey some of the energy of his lectures and 'actions' but there was definitely a sense that you HAD TO BE THERE. He may have been a great 'shaman' and a charismatic orator, but it's hard for the onlooker in 2005 to enjoy him on that level just watching a ropey early 70s video and looking at his extraordinary blackboards. It was a bit like being told a band were great live and being given a live album as evidence of this.

I saw an exhibition of his work in Berlin a few years ago and i remember enjoying that one more, perhaps because the works chosen were more interesting, or maybe because there was an absence of overbearing explanation and of the curators telling us how fantastic he was to be around.