OSTENDE on the beach or in the dunes a cube shaped house therein the Samurai Sword is a Blutwurst PLINTH
Joseph Beuys
German, 1921–1986
1970-82
This installation of rolled felt, dried meat, metal, string, and a glass case is Joseph Beuys’s poetic assemblage that uses organic and industrial materials to stage themes of healing, memory, and social transformation.
You first register a long, soft coil of felt snaking across the floor like a slow, exhausted organism, its muted, tactile presence set against the cool, clinical glass vitrine and a small suspended metal element, creating a quietly uncanny, ritualized landscape.
A key example of Beuys’s idea of ‘social sculpture,’ the work helped expand art from object-making into a practice using humble, charged materials to carry personal myth, wartime trauma, and a political plea for communal renewal.
Medium
Rolled felt in three parts, dried meat, metal, string, and glass display case
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase
Accession
247.1983.a-k
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
