The Silent ‘Plight’ of Joseph Beuys

Intimate installation art that has a memory of its own and comments on increasingly relevant global issues.

My understanding of art was changed by my first ‘primary experience’ with the work of Joseph Beuys. It was one of those pieces that ‘woke me up’ to the potential of what art could be. Of what art could do. I had already seen his work in books at my University (then a Polytechnic) Library and came across this installation during an Art Department trip in 1985.

The Anthony d’Offay gallery was a small, but hugely influential, private gallery just off New Bond Street. It was a fixture of my itinerary for trips to London. It has since ‘wound-down’ and sold most of its collection to the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland but, back in the day, it was well worth seeking out. It was there that I first saw the work of several other artists that would become enduring favourites of mine, including Richard Long, Cy Twombly, Howard Hodgkin and Maurizio Cattelan.

After a long coach journey, there was the London Tube, which at the time was still a novel experience. Back above ground, traffic noise, fumes, the hustle and bustle of the streets, the vibration and low roar of the big city — then entering this little gallery and, as the door swung closed behind me:

absolute quiet…

The entire space was lined, floor to ceiling, with thick vertical rolls of grey felt that completely sound-proofed the gallery. The still silence gave the impression of being elsewhere, and the thick rolls of felt implied the tree trunks of a deep, dense woodland.

Plight does what an installation should do. It completely alters the space, both aesthetically and emotionally, whilst working with it. This then alters anyone entering the space, and in this case the presence of the viewer(s) directly affects the space and the installation… their presence, however passive, interacts with it, and alters it.

Apart from all that felt, the only other components of the installation were a grand piano, with a blackboard on top of it and a small medical thermometer on top of that. The grand piano, the blackboard and grey felt are all recurring motifs in the iconography of Beuys and have accrued additional meanings over the years.

For Plight, the piano is usually locked closed (though I’m pretty sure I had seen it open on my visit) and the blackboard is blank, except for its pre-printed music staves. All elements that seem to represent unrealised potential, or ideas that will never become things… Is the blackboard awaiting a composition to be written upon it? Perhaps it once bore musical notation, a great heartfelt composition to be performed on the piano, a melody now erased?

…and then you wonder what the thermometer might mean.

Well, thermometers are used by doctors to diagnose fever, because a raised temperature usually implies a sickness of some sort. Also, thermometers respond to their environment, yet they lack sentience.

To me, the thermometer is at the core of this work’s genius. After thinking hard, you become aware that although it may be cold outside, it’s really quite warm in the gallery. That’s because felt is such a good insulating material, not only against sound but for heat too…

There is the realisation that there have been other visitors before, and each has left behind a portion of their body heat, raising the temperature just a little. The thermometer records this tiny and gradual increase and becomes a form of memory for the installation. This suggests much broader implications.

Joseph Beuys was a founding member of the Green Party in Germany and was a very politically active artist, though he considered himself akin to a shaman. In light of this, we understand that Plight is an environment, and our very presence within it has altered it. We have not interfered, we have not ‘done’ anything except exist with the environment. Just by being here, we alter our environment. On a small scale, Plight is a metaphor for global warming and the incremental impact that the human species has on our entire environment.

For me, Joseph Beuys could be the ‘greatest artist of all time’ (depending on what day you ask me). Although I think he created works that are even better than this, such as his ‘Coyote’ performance in 1974 and its related works, Plight is still something special, because of the whole experience I had of it, first hand, during the formative years of my artistic consciousness.

In the autumn of 1985, I left the Anthony d’Offay gallery with a lot of profound thoughts and, in exchange, I left a little of my body heat — Plight remembered me, and I remember Plight… very clearly, to this day.

*All images used here for educational purposes under fair usage policy.