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Fat body, the linguistic nature of signs and Beuys' idea of social sculpture

Fat body, the linguistic nature of signs and Beuys' idea of social sculpture The Venus of Willendorf is, as we know, a single fat gyros and swarmed jewel of prehistoric art creation. The emphasis on breasts, abdomen, hips and hills, the subjugation of the leg below the hip's formation, the reduction of head and arms - in art history, these properties are not the cruel realism of a permanent tissue damage caused by pregnancy but religious altitude: "[...] artistic intention was probably in its the first aim to increase the irritant effect of the statuette and to awake real associations from the freedom of exaggerating. The same is caused by the rough abundance of the Venus of Willendorf. It and similar representations have been held repeatingly for the portrait-like depiction of an obese [sic] Palaeolithic type of woman,[...] a schematization, in which female sexual characteristics dominate the picture completely" (Torbrügge 1968: 19).
The problem is the fact that the Venus of Willendorf is hardly appealing - and the argument that this was only a contemporary judgment of taste, not quite true. Firstly, ideal body representations in the Indian and Asian region are clearly "compact" - ie, the configurations do not remember exactly corporeal damage due to age or pregnancy, but the impression of physical health - especially in the not too simple everyday situations we can imagine for prehistoric days, the representation of health ensures a positive reception. Also is surprisingly observed by Torbrügge how the female statuettes approach the forms of male genitalia. Thus, the Venus of Willendorf, has not just oversized breasts hanging down, but also shows by their shape and across this a ring-like bead, a considerable formal proximity to the glans of the male penis. The eye-catching hair accessories cover its head and face. Similar deformations or rhetorics against the personality of the characters are found in the "Dame de Sereuil", about which Torbrügge writes: "In the Dame de Sireuil the protruding abdomen, the counterweight to the grossly exaggerated buttocks, gives the wrong impression of sweeping lines as a conscious stylistic principle." (18) Similar is an anthropomorphic statue made of limestone with red chalk painting, found in caves in the vineyard of Neuburg an der Donau. This, too, combines a reduction to the torso with an overemphasis on the buttocks and a formal representation of the proximity to male genitalia (cgl. Torbrügge 17 f). If we therefore like to assume, that these finds were not portrait-like, individual representations of real body shapes and persons, it seems reasonable to suggest as reson for the realistic style not a religious use, but - similar to many later Greek representations which were simly destroyed by the "censors" of the British Museum - a reference to sexuality and prostitution. The reduced and bodily de-idealized body forms stress the object character of the female figure - the formal proximity to the male genital confirm a submission to male sexuality and signal as mixed up with the exploitated, supressed female body a depersonalization. The use of such statuettes - which were often very small, 7.2 to 10, .5 cm (Venus of Willendorf) - might then have been used like a red light to mark a social space, or even - almost like a door sign - as attribute of individuals, to give recognize to the at least "oldest profession in the world", whose existence in the cultural history is (except by Friedell) almost always pushed back with enthusiasm. Decay, reshaping and fruitlessness of fat, after all, would then be first semiotic signs, maybe documents of the first articulations of language at all. The overwhelmingly forms may well be a sign that people did not have a vocabulary and no language to increase the readiness for socially unbound, instrumental sexuality for anyone in general. It is quite conceivable that "sex workers" in any sense, or their "pimps" signalled with the help of such figures the men of the surrounding group that they were available for sexual services - while words were not yet available. Needless to say that sexual incentives are ideally suited to establish gestural conventions, and such even to prepare language codes. The specifically prostitutive, not nebulous religious sense, would also give a good example of the language-likeness of visual symbols.
In the Baroque period, such as with Fragonard and the reception of him in his time, before him Rembrandt and his comrades, show representations of the female body and the fullness of the body as - well-hidden staging of an invitation to sexual pleasures. Either overemphasis and hyperproduction of sexual characteristics as in Fragonard or the staging of mytholigical topics like in Rembradt suggest a "pragmatic" interpretation. Die Gestaltungsmittel für den Hinweis auf Prostitution oder promiske Liebesakte kommen auch dadurch zustnade, dass diese mythologische Szenerie symbolisch "herabgesetzt" wird. The design tool for reporting acts and offers of prostitution or promiscuous love is created by the fact that this mythological scene is symbolically lowered. Insbesondere bei Rembrandt ist der mytholigische, mit Putten verzierte und schön ausgeleuchtete Vordergrund durch "zwielichtige" Gestalten im Bildhintergrund in Frage gestellt. Particularly in the case of Rembrandt's the foreground is beautifully illuminated by its mytholigical subject, decorated with cherubs, but put into question with "shady" characters in the picture background. Diese Gestalten, ebensogut weiblich als auch männlich - kontrollieren das Licht, Wohl und Wehe der mythologisierten Damen, die so weniger als mythologische Göttinnen, denn als Mieterinnen in einem Bordell erscheinen. These figures, as well female as male - control the lighting, the weal and woe of the mythologized ladies who thus appear rather as tenants in a brothel than as mythological goddesses. This seen in Rembrandt's "Danae".
The body shapes are finally idealized. Striking is that the thighs are almost always full and round to emphasize the waist's narrowness and the circular shape of the hip or, at first, to constitute exactly this impression.
There are truly "cover fat" thighs suddenly feminine characteristics to ideal figures, since they do not stress about PARTIAL wichtger and hip but still, the shame, the pubic mound. Fett dient in diesen Bildern nicht mehr zur Unterpolsterung von sozialer Deformation oder Verachtung sondern als Prüderiemerkmal. Louis Tuaillons "Weibliche Figur", eine 47.5 cm hohe Bronzestatuette aus der Zeit um 1900 und stilistisch beeinflusst von Hans von Marées hebt nicht nur in signifikanter Vaariation eines griechischen Diskusswerfers die geschlossenen Arme, um sich selbst zu betrachten - dabei dem Betrachter den Blick auf den Busen verwehrend. Fat is used in these images no longer upholstery of social strain or contempt but rather as Prüderiemerkmal. Tuaillon Louis "Female Figure", 47.5 cm high bronze statue dating from around 1900 and stylistically influenced by Hans Marées will not only significantly Vaariation a Greek Discus thrower the closed arms, to look at themselves - while the viewer looking at the breasts deny. Sie steht auch mit leicht angewinkeltem Bein da, um die füllige V-Form der Oberschenkel zu betonen. She stands with legs slightly bent to accentuate the V-shape of plump thigh. Anders als in barocken Figuren treten Bauch und Hüfte gegenüber den Oberschenkeln deutlich zurück, sodass die Beinansätze die Figur nahezu wie eine (knappe) Bikinihose bekleiden. Unlike Baroque figures belly and hips to the thighs come back clear, so dress the leg approaches the figure almost like a (brief) Bikini pant.
The coarseness of the early years and the irony of tough mythologies have so completely become an almost eccentric virtuosity of the deadlock - almost literally, but in the figurative sense! The sexual content of a representation may be underlined in posthegelian times even in this way. An overwhelmingly approach of self-abandonment is therefore at least as suspect of sexualization as the visual really allusive discourses of the medieval and baroque ages. Back to Rembrandt, we become aware of the - very rough - irony of Divine laburnum that will, mythologically and perhaps literally secular patter down on the sitter, a least as the story goes. In the ambiguity of realism and mythology unfolds the sexual content of the 'rain', the laburnum is revealed as a metaphor of sperm. At the same time, the work is, especially in its complex narrative and alternation between different con-texts, a metaphor for the arts - and its seems, that Danae recognizes her sex partner even without his direct presence, but as he is causing the picture's visual gesture. As such this alludes to the mythological god Zeus, who attended Danae as a laburnum in the mythological narration. The gestural rhetoric of the image seems 'real' - in the sense of a transfigration created by the artist Rembrandt - him as a laburnum. The sparks of gold along the decorations of the bed up to the cupid accord to the golden rain of the painter - that would be unremarkable, if in this role of still clearly chauvinistic staging wasn't visible an Aristotelian distinction that was always important for the theory of the arts: Aristotle's understanding of the philosophical concept of energeia was thus typically understood as exemplified in the art of creation. The engendering act includes, as a criterion for Energeia, not only the art of creating an idea and something concrete according to. The criterion is especially significant to be extremely soft - it includes both highly artificial activities and natural processes such as fertility and child birth as a coherent process. Similarly, Aristotle contextualize the "ergon" in his philosophy - as a faculty and plant, which only men are capable to produce. He even defines it by this, astonishing, as we may hesitate to understand this limit as a property. Energeia is on the other hand not equally necessary specific - except in the case of art, perhaps - but can also be regarded as a sexual act, regardless of whether the witness of a calf 'next door' belongs to the production of plants to the same effect. So we are in the midst of the completely digged and theory-dunged garden of onto-ethical staging and distribution of art and its social roles, costumized as energy. Hip and thigh circumference leads thus almost immediately, just with a pinch of Aristotle in the art of the 20th century, to Joseph Beuys and its fat objects and batteries: the almost traumatic torsi of women from the sixties, documents of the development of Energeia objects towards and up to the social work of art in vices of zinc, the battery discharge.
About the theoreticity of his materials Beuys has left no doubt: "A fat corner is not done in order to smear and cover a table with grease, but a fat corner has been so to stand as a fat corner in contrast to other processes, which such a vivid, fragile material makes in space and time, so just the stuff raised out of a big fat aggregate claims its theoriticity. And this theory is, of course, not always visible when people see auch an experimental arrangement in the museum." (Wikipedia,"fat corner") Fat is, as we know, a crucial energy and heating source of the human body, the internal resource that compares well with the zinc content of a battery and makes its game also as a sensitive exemplification of resources and their inherent problems: Too much, too little, about what time, with which restitution and mining conditions, etc., with any relationship to heat and so on. Fat - especially fat - is therefore also a convincing exemplification for a kind of natural science that synthesizes the natural phenomena in experiment instead of extruding it out of its concrete context in experiment and description, whereas these components are meant as both biophysical and belonging to other natural sciences, furthermore as social and mental components - altogether building up the object - here especially the "fat" - and its 'plasticity'. 'Plasticity' has to be understood in its whole range of senses: from the literal meaning of extension in time and space to a wider metaphorical one of being capable of a conceptualization along a multiple of different perspectives. The lush swell of the hips and thighs in the female torsos is thus already a kind of comment of the Energeia concept. Particularly as it remained in the vise of the artist it is more a critical study than a simple reduplication of role performances. Female nudes, animal studies, especially rabbits and deer (thus animals representing the fertility in everyday discourse, but fit also well classical topoi of Naturalism (Durer) or genre paintings (hunting scenes)) were employed by Beuys since the fifties. Works from the collection of Klüser such as "Jason II" done in 1962 / 1980, and "Hirsch" of 1959 (cast 1984), in which the deer is reduced to a metal board, a board of iron not too dissimilar to wood floors, to show "domestication" in each material forming, almost bursting out this idea. Beuys's small sculpture "bed (corset)" of 1950 (cast 1969) shows a female torso in a vice, his "bathtub for a Hero" from 1950, 1961, 1984 puts a tin tub together with an immersion heater and a torso-like steel structure. The animal wife of 1949 with archaic Egyptian appearance emphasizes the subject matter which employed Beuys in the years of 1950 and 1969, up to 1984.
In 1964, after a theorization of the drawings by theories of social structures and by energetic and morphological studies, the function of drawing changes into a kind of open score, which should be understood as one step in a continuing process of work. The construction of a connotative, theorisable aesthetic system developed in the 60s and included a reflection on gender roles: "During the 24-hour action 'and in us ... among us... flooded' in June 1965 at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, using materials which were originally used in the Arte Povera like honey, fat, felt and copper, he put a symbolic 'thing vocabulary' into artistic intuition for which he won in this performance the meanings 'energy storage', 'power' and 'creativity'. Further actions with titles such as 'How to explain the pictures to a dead hare' (1965), 'EURASIA' (1966), 'Manresa' (1966 ) and 'Titus Andronicus / Iphigenia' (1969) followed."(wikipedia) At this time he was also working with Moorman, a female Fluxus musician in the inner circle of the Fluxus group. Beuys created a sculpture he entitled significantly 'Infiltration Homogeneous for Cello', taking over a name of one of her compositions and her cello in its own plant, thus emphasizing the equality of both works - and thus reminding to his own musical education in his youth. The deconstruction of identity cutting across gender identities, formed by abstraction and a new emphasis on aspects of 'energyforming', as one can see in the burka of the cello, based on a real object, that was enriched with symbolic worth in Beuys's personal history. In two senses, the work represents artistic work, "energeia", which here, as Beuys increasingly articulated theoretically, illustrates social shaping and design. This self-image of the artist is nearly indisputable: "He understood his installation art as a transformation of the idea - as a thought which was vividly depicted as energy storage and should provoce and challenge the viewer to think." (Wikipedia). Auch die Assoziation von Energie, energietragenden Materialien und Wärme wird explizit und reflektiert: "Wärme und Kälte sind nach Beuys „ überräumliche plastische Prinzipien.“ Seine „ Plastische Theorie“ entwickelte er während seiner Studien zu den Romantikern Novalis , Philipp Otto Runge , sowie zu Rudolf Steiner und ab 1973 zu Wilhelm Schmundt, nach deren Begegnung beim 1. Jahreskongress Dritter Weg im Internationalen Kulturzentrum Achberg." The association of energy, materials and heat as involving energy is explicitly and reflected: "Heat and cold are in Beuys' theory 'trans-spatial sculptural principles'. His theory of Sculpture was developed during his studies on the Romantics Novalis, Philipp Otto Runge and Rudolf Steiner and from 1973 of William Schmundt after a meeting of Beuys and him at the 1st Annual Congress 'Third Way' in the International Cultural Center Achberg." (Wikipedia) In particular, the sculptural work and the bronze-cast embodied the artistic activities of the transformation and plant development on energy involving states of heat : "He transferred the plastic principle, that within the creation of a cooling down form through the action of the sculptor a hot, warm, and chaotic raw material is put into a crystalline one, into a theory of creativity. " Thus the female torsos from the sixties, which were declared to ar works within their mold, show a theoretical reflected but not gender-indifferent production of art within the framework of the classical energeia-term, including also a critical analysis of this concept. Apparently, the female body and its classical wealth, constituted by fat tissue, becomes the starting point of the entire theory of function on fat as the 'energy involving material' of social sculpture. The amazing thing is, that even independent from the political art-activities Beuys' artistic success can be explained. Against the first intuition, his work is classical, especially in its connection to the embodiment of fat and abundance, which is often visibly formulated in the female act. The waist shrinkage that accompanied especially the beauty concept of the fifties - critized in the sixties by the fully complementary style of Fluxus and others - can be found in the Beuys torsos as far as these are symbols of cramping - cramped in their "mold" of an imperfect social sculpture. In contrast to its classic predecessors, which use the principle of association of warmness to the female body and developed metaphors in the sense of "energeia" more for their own glorification or for pleasure from a male perspective - from the potential prostitution signals of the early days to the artistic act of Rembrandt metaphorizing Zeus and Danae -, thus, in this contrast, Beuys' works are well analytically and critically. They recover functionalizations in contemporary culture and create in their analysis a potential independent of the physical energy or energy-materials, such as in the case of the female body and its representations of fat. The work of Beuys is thus already in the sixties, not simply "left wing" within the meaning of critical theory, but more in terms of students, who denuded their breast in front of Adorno to critisize his dissolution of everything into discourse. In the sixties, Beuys' works are found explicitly "feminist", and get resonance directly to the international public, especially the works of the documenta. His feminism is such that we may guess, his works would not have been accepted if they had been done by a female artist. Whereas Beuys's personal history as a several wounded soldier, who was shot in the Second World War and a sculptor, whose design for an Auschwitz memorial was rejected, while another proposal for a Cenotaph was accepted, made it obviously possible to disregard the feminist implications and the explicit theories of his works . This although the way Beuys's art works fit into the intercourse of art and culture along the artistic and sopcial concept of the female nude and its theories is almost unsurpassable. It was left to Moorman and other artists to emphasize Beuys's position within this context and his concpet of social sculpture. The homage "Infiltration Homogeneous for Cello", with a Cello as a sculptural form reminiscent of classic metaphors for female torsos (thinks of Ingres and Man Ray), is insofar precisely a great prototype for Beuys's art - even if the artwork may remain lower n worth because parts are made by another artist. From the social mimesis of the admired social sculpture art reception may fall short, but the important 'brush strokes' of the art work's theoretical approach keep its visibility nevertheless.

Dr. Ulrike Ritter