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Beuys, Joseph - Fat chair
Identifier
021048
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Artistic Alchemy of Joseph Beuys – Dr David Adams
Ultimately, beeswax proved less suitable than fat as an indicator medium for Beuys's theory of sculpture. The source of his use of fat is often attributed by writers to Beuys's wartime plane crash in the Crimea in 1943. He was rescued and nursed back to health by nomadic Tartars, who salved his many wounds with animal fat while he lay mostly unconscious for eight days. While one cannot ignore the role of such a key life experience, Beuys himself discounted its importance for his use of fat, and instead pointed to the material's aptness for his Theory of Sculpture. Beuys found that this new material reacted more sensitively to warmth than did beeswax.
When he exhibited his famous Fat Chair of 1963 and innumerable fat corners and fat elements in sculptures, Actions, and installations, he also found that it was a more provocatively expressive material that strongly affected viewers and could lead to opportunities for extended dialogues on the ideas behind his artworks.