Untitled I
Joseph Beuys
German, 1921–1986
1962-81
A glass-fronted cabinet of found and organic materials—chocolate, fat, felt, bottles, metal coils and a dried rose—assembled by Joseph Beuys to turn ordinary objects into a poetic, politically charged constellation of memory and action.
A spare white vitrine presents its contents like relics: small, muted items spaced deliberately across the shelf—dark tangled metal, a rolled felt, pale blocks of chocolate, a lone dried rose and glass bottles—inviting close inspection and a sense of time weathered into matter.
This piece illustrates Beuys’s move to transform sculpture into a form of social practice, using humble, tactile materials and everyday detritus to make political ideas and collective memory tangible and to argue that art can shape public life.
Medium
Glass, wood, and metal display case containing (left to right): Monuments/4 Chocolate Detonations (Monumente/4 Schokoladensprengungen), c. 1964: chocolate; Untitled, 1962: dried meat, paint, and chocolate; Untitled, 1977: slate; Rose for Direct Democracy (Rose für direkte Demokratie), 1973: rose and graduated cylinder; Untitled, 1964: wood board, oil paint, laundry line, clothes pins, wax toenail, hair, fat, felt, tin can cover, tar, and iron weight; Untitled, c. 1963, metal rod and wax; Action German Student Party (Aktion Deutsche Studentenpartei), 1968: paper, printed paper, glass jar, rosemary, and essential oils, in three parts; Neck (Hals), 1981: stem of a plant and glass bottle
Dimensions
79 x 91 1/2 x 26 1/2" (200.7 x 232.4 x 67.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Maja Oeri and Hans Bodenmann
Accession
1150.2007.a
Palette
Exhibitions
