Chapter 5: Beuys and Goethe, 1969–1986, Düsseldorf-Kassel-Berlin / Hoofdstuk 5: Beuys en Goethe / Chapitre 5: Beuys et Goethe
Ensemble
At documenta 5 in 1972 Byars appeared on the roof of Museum Fridericianum, calling German names through a golden megaphone to the audience below, and Joseph Beuys invited the public to discuss how to reshape society through creative activity in his Bureau für die direkte Demokratie. Both artists were concerned with the role of art in society, but in diametrally opposite ways. That is why Byars chose Beuys, the first German he ever met, as his antagonist. Both artists continue in the tradition of contemplating east and west as a unity, much like Goethe.
‘Once I read a Baudelaire sentence I loved. He said it was March 23rd or something and he did not have a new pair of lavender, lilac silk gloves. So, he had this wonderful elegant feeling about springtime too. This great man Joseph Beuys would buy a new rubber glove for spring. (Haha). A green one. He came to one of my activities once when I was in the gold suit and he had his fishing suit and the green glove in his pocket. Beuys was one who truly understood all of these things I think.’
From an interview with James Lee Byars by Wolf Günter Thiel (1995), in: ‘James Lee Byars - The White Mass’, Keulen 2004
