Untitled IV

1960s

Forms the idea of “social sculpture”

Drawing on Novalis and Schiller and on Rudolf Steiner's ideas of social threefolding, Beuys developed the concept of social sculpture: society as a whole is one great work of art to which everyone can contribute creatively (“everyone is an artist”).

1962

Friendship with Nam June Paik and first steps in Fluxus

In 1962 Beuys befriended his Düsseldorf colleague Nam June Paik, a member of Fluxus, which began his brief formal involvement with the movement; he viewed art's economic and institutional framework differently from the others, however.

1964

An action in Aachen: a punch in the face

At a festival at the Technical College in Aachen that coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the attempt on Hitler's life, students interrupted Beuys's action and one of them punched him in the face; a photograph of the artist with a bloodied nose and a raised arm circulated in the media and brought him wider public attention.

1964

Composes the fictionalised CV “Lebenslauf/Werklauf”

For the Aachen festival Beuys produced an idiosyncratic CV, “Lebenslauf/Werklauf” (“Life Course/Work Course”) — a deliberately fictionalised account of his life in which historical events mingle with metaphor and myth (he called his birth the “exhibition of a wound”).

28 June 1964 – 6 October 1964

Exhibition: Documenta III

26 November 1965

First solo exhibition in a private gallery

The show opened with an action involving a dead hare: Beuys, his face covered in honey and gold leaf, murmured explanations of the drawings on the walls to the animal while viewers watched through the gallery window; some critics called the photograph with the hare a new Mona Lisa of the 20th century.