Bruce Charlton's Notions

I have been reading the avant-garde 'artist' Joseph Beuys recently (who some authorities regard as the most important 'artist' of the late 20th century) - from my recognition that his work was an explicit continuation of the philosophical insights of Rudolf Steiner; as expressed most clearly in The Philosophy of Freedom. 

In other words; if one engages with Beuys from a basis in The Philosophy of Freedom; we can see his work - especially its quantitatively-major element, the teaching - as directly derived from the same insights as Steiner described. Indeed, these insights were described, advocated and put into practice by Beuys across a wide range of activities.  

I said 'artist' in scare quotes - because Beuys was not really an artist in the traditional sense; or, at best, a rather mediocre one. Having surveyed the span of Beuys's work, it seems obvious that as a sculptor or in terms of his drawings, he was no better than most decent art school graduates. 

Indeed, his surviving artistic productions are mostly unpleasant in effect - being mostly dull, drab, depressing - and, in many instances (and sometimes deliberately) decaying. 

Yet Beuys was a genius - and this was based on (at least...) three major attributes:

1. Beuys was extremely intelligent - far more intelligent than 99% of the people around him in the art world - including the artists, students, gallery owners, critics and scholars (partly because art does not attract the best intellectuals and does reward confident frauds).

2. Beuys was extremely creative in his thinking. This is obvious in his speaking - the records of interviews and accounts of lectures. He (rather like Steiner) did a truly colossal amount of teaching and discussing - at times apparently up to 10 hours a day in public discussions, day after day, week after week. 

From the combination of intelligence and creativity; Beuys always seems to have something to say about anything (again, like Steiner); was very quick on the uptake and in response, and had considerable general knowledge at his command. 

3. Beuys had an extremely dominant, charismatic and magnetic personality - such that people who were in his presence were often overwhelmed, but could never ignore him - and those who spent much time with him seems to have been affected for the rest of their lives. 

Beuys was very influential, and launched several projects and 'organizations' - although it seems clear that from his point of view these were not intended to be moral, 'functional' institutions; but mostly venues for conversation, stimulation, and endlessly developing ideas and thoughts. 

His most famous slogan was "Everyone is an artist" which was apparently intended to mean that traditional art - the production of beautiful artifacts that could 'stand-alone' - was to be superseded by Steiner-esque Thinking from a condition of Freedom (which I regard as the same as my understanding of Primary Thinking). 

In other words, while an artist (i.e. everybody) continues to do and make things; the focus ought to be on the creative thinking which was primary, rather than the products which derived from thinking. 

This creative thinking was revealed more by discussions and conversations about 'art objects' and the thinking behind them - than it was by the objects themselves; this activity being embedded in a context of the evolutionary development of human consciousness under divine providence. 

In other words - I would regard Beuys as aiming to move from the 'medieval' (Intellectual Soul) world view, to the other-side of modernist meaninglessness and isolation - to arrive at the condition of Barfieldian Final Participation - when Men consciously choose to participate with divine creation in the creation of their own world-view. 

For Beuys to assert and operate on the basis that 'everyone' was an artist, was self-destructive from the point of view of a Professor in an art school - and indeed Beuys was sacked from his position. 

He regarded teaching as by far his most important activity; and went on to found (or develop the concept) of a Free University as providing a forum. But this is oxymoronic, and could not exist without refuting its own premises. 

Beuys's other projects had a similarly paradoxical and self-contradicting nature. He was a founder of the German Green party, but left it when the party began to operate as a party - winning elections, getting power etc.  

He also often asserted Rudolf Steiner's Threefold organization of society; which nowadays operates in a realm of quixotic idealism - and functions mainly as the basis for that kind of radical and open-ended discussion which Beuys so much enjoyed and advocated.

It seems that Beuys was a comprehensive failure at his articulated goals (whether in art, education, environmentalism. politics) - but that this was inevitable and indeed 'part of the plan' - since he was in reality a spiritual philosopher aiming qualitatively beyond current societal possibilities.

In the artistic productions, 'actions', teaching etc; Beuys was trying to 'cast a spell' (which worked only partially, and intermittently - and was heavily dependent on his presence) through which to imagine a personhood and society beyond our totalitarian bureaucratic materialism; and thereby inspire individuals to understand and adopt a Steiner-like understanding of Freedom rooted in primary and creative thinking, and an unorthodox Christianity.  

My impression is that hardly anybody understood what Beuys was doing, despite his repeated explanations - just as hardly anybody understood Steiner, Barfield or Arkle. People had very different metaphysical assumptions and interests, and were mostly trying to get along in society as-it-was; and their bottom line was ideological and pragmatic, rather than spiritual and idealistic. 

Like everybody must; Beuys operated in this mainstream world of ideology and practicality; and of course - like everybody - was prone to lapses, selfishness, vanity etc. - since this mortal life is about learning, not achieving perfection. Among his writings (as with Steiner's) there is a good deal of pretentious nonsense, showing-off, and pandering to the audience. 

There was definite dishonesty - especially in Beuys's claimed life-story relating to his self-propagated legend of having been a Stuka pilot rescued from a crashed plane by Tartar tribesmen, smeared in fat and wrapped in felt for warmth - which so many critics took as the basis for biographical and critical understanding. And the surviving 'works' mostly come across as enervating and miserable. 

Yet there is an underlying, implicit, but directly-knowable energy, seriousness and Goodness about Joseph Beuys; which stands in stark opposition to the evil inversions of the art-world that has perpetuated his memory and legacy. 

Indeed; Beuys's motivational Goodness and Romantic Christianity has become indirectly more evident recently, by high-level critical attacks on the man and his legacy - that derive from the heart of darkness constituted by the propagandists for the mainstream modern establishment. 

These attacks take the usual form of slurs alleging Fascism, racism, colonialist appropriation etc. - typical 'deplatforming' stuff deployed against any person or institution from The Past by evil powers when they detect potential danger from true values.  

My point is that - with the correct assumptions, and a willingness to sift and discern - there is potential value in the work of Joseph Beuys - despite his having been, while he lived, the darling of some of the most ridiculous and pernicious folk on the planet - i.e. the trendy, lefty, commissars of the 'modern art' Establishment.  

On the face of it, there ought to be nothing to interest me, and much to repel me, in the avant garde artist Joseph Beuys - whose art works were worthless and pretentious; and who has had a great deal of garbage and gobbledegook written about him by people for whom I have little respect.

I first came across Beuys when I say an exhibition at a gallery in Bristol, more than thirty years ago, which left me stunned by its triviality and attitude of servile reverence - if I mention that it included his toenail clippings in a display box, I think that probably says enough.

But somehow, for some (apparently) inexplicable reason, I have felt compelled to explore the life and work of this chap over the years; and have seen a fair bit of it by now.

I have never found anything of his which I thought was good, and almost all of it I regard as very bad - I don't think he had any discernible artistic talent, or less than most ordinarily-competent art students. Indeed, Beuys as good as acknowledged this with his most famous mantra that 'everyone is an artist' - implying he had no greater ability than anyone else. Furthermore, Beuys behaved like an objectionable poseur and guru; and seems to have been surrounded by worshippers for much of his later life - which is psychologically and spiritually a bad place to be.

And yet I cannot help but like the chap! - I seem to discern in him a good heart and a real Romantic Christian spirituality. Beuys was, indeed, an Anthroposophist who (unlike most) tuned-into the deep aspects of Steiner. There is Christian symbolism throughout - and it seems that he discussed such matters with his disciples (despite that they did not share his interest or beliefs).

I find my paradoxical long-term fascination and liking of Beuys to be a phenomenon worth dwelling upon. What seems to be going-on is that all the 'information' about Beuys is against him, all the 'communications' indicate little to appeal and much to repel... But my non-visual, non-verbal, non-conceptual 'direct' discernment tells me a different story.

From a materialist perspective, this is explicable in terms of Beuys's legendary charisma - eye-witnesses say that he was someone who simply compelled attention, fascination and admiration from many people; wherever he went, whatever he did. This comes across in photographs and movies, and in the way people talk and write about him... maybe I have simply tuned-into this? 

Yet charisma usually dissipates inexorably after death. Later generations typically cannot understand why so much attention was given to the charismatic, when his works seem so mundane. Despite all of which, I am drawn - and more strongly with the years - towards the man!

There is a, widening, gap between surface and depth; between apparent and response - And therefore I tend to assume that this a spiritually significant phenomenon.

Is it then good, or bad spiritually? The basic trend of modern art is certainly evil, and Beuys seemed to do much to establish and amplify this trend. Maybe my fascination is 'demonic'?

However, in modernity, good impulse is often used for evil ends; and Beuys cannot be blamed for the fact that he never found an audience for his deepest concerns and meanings - that is, after all, the normal situation (and was also the case for Beuys's obscure artistic contemporary, William Arkle).

Could this then be an example of the presence of the dead? The idea seems fanciful - but the very dissonance between the surface and the depth; the fact that there is so little I like, so much I dislike, about what Beuys did artistically, may actually be the best evidence for it.

It's a working hypothesis...

JB: If Man is conditioned by the environment, by what is already there, he can't be free; he can only be free if he is not governed by his environment. Of course man is always influenced by his environment, but if he is completely governed by it, then he is no longer free. 

Interviewer: But man himself is a part of the environment.

JB: Yes, but only in material terms, only in respect of his physical being. What I am concerned with is the part of myself which is not connected with the environment... 

When talking about freedom, one has to determine its foundations, and that can only be done by ascertaining its limits. We can say that freedom is possible, but freedom cannot come from the environment: it has to come from creativity... 

I said that freedom = creativity = man. And that freedom is achieved on the basis of the creative principle. And in that case, who else could be God except Man?

If we don't want to go quite this far; we could say that God is a 'generator'. 

From Joseph Beuys's interview with Achille Bonito Oliva, in Energy Plan for the Western Man (1990) writings and interviews compiled by Carin Kuoni. 

**

My comment:  

Here Joseph Beuys gets to essentially the same understanding of freedom/ free will/ agency that I reached (but some decades later). 

Genuine freedom of Man entails a divine concept of creativity. We are free only when we are being-creative, and creativity is an attribute of the divine. Thus man is, when free and being-creative, divine: a god.  

Freedom is not a physical but a spiritual attribute; and we cannot observe freedom if we deny the spiritual. 

Also, freedom's expression is spiritual not physical - that is, freedom may be found in thinking, but not (or not fully) in physical action; because physical action is always analyzable as a product of environment. 

This is an important insight for the Christian (here-and-now) because Christianity entails that he who is saved, the believer, the resurrected - is genuinely free: free to choose or reject salvation. 

Christianity is (or should be) built-around this absolute, existential, metaphysical freedom - yet such freedom is not satisfactorily explained by traditional theology, which sees God as utterly different from Man and the omnipotent creator of everything - leaving no room for other sources of divine creative freedom. 

Modern Man experiences absolute agency; but typically abuses (from the perspective of divine purpose) it in order (passively and unconsciously) to believe what could be termed leftist-materialism; which ideology then subverts freedom by denying God and the spiritual realm. 

Modern Man therefore chooses to regard himself as unfree - his action a product of the physical/ material environment, his thinking an irrelevant epiphenomenon... 

Hence Modern Man uses his freedom tacitly to assent to a totalitarian system of evil lies; on the basis that 'there is no alternative'. 

For Beuys as for myself; this creative freedom ought instead to be used creatively - as Beuys said "Everyone is an artist". 

(We are therefore free to deny our freedom: but this denial has the consequence that we then oppose God's creative goals.)

We can now see that this 'artistry' is to be in the realm of the spiritual, of thinking (it can be nowhere else!); and the intent is that it directed 'at-God', at the divine in a conscious way, to work in harmony with God's creative purposes expressed through the person of Jesus Christ. 

Man now needs to become aware of his God-nature, and of the nature and scope (and limits) of this God-nature; and that this life is (and is meant to be - meant By God to be) a struggle between those who deploy their creativity actively and in harmony with God...

And against that: those who remain unconscious, ignore or suppress their potential freedom, and passively-align with those who oppose God (i.e. spiritual demonic powers). 

The struggle of this mortal life is needed for us to learn... We learn by and from this struggle. 

[The fact of death is very much a part of the mortal living struggle; which means we should - consciously, actively -  take death into account in this life. Death - our death, and also death as an incisive event in world history and for all Men - is central to Christianity. Beuys wrote about this matter specifically, and I intend to quote some of his reflections on the matter in a later post.]

Note: All text consists of quotations from Joseph Beuys, made in an interview with Louwrien Wijers, November 22nd 1979; published in Writing as Sculpture (1996). 

I have edited the text for clarity based on my understanding of what was intended - for which I take responsibility. Because although Beuys was fluent in English - he was not idiomatic; and often deployed German grammatical constructions - plus some personal terminology, and some from Rudolf Steiner. It is probably best to try and get an overview (Gestalt) of his meaning, rather than trying to build understanding from the accumulation of specific statements. 

Also, because this was a conversation the recorded and transcribed words benefit, I believe, from some re-arrangement, excision, and slight verbal expansion. 

My point here is to emphasize - and this surprised me considerably! - that Joseph Beuys was a serious, and tough-minded, hard-nosed, Christian; in his primary motivations, and his understanding of art, politics, society... 

And he was a romantic Christian, because he saw that (here-and-now) Christianity depends on the individual human being, personally choosing to take an active and conscious role in addressing the problems of mundane modern existence: materialism, meaninglessness, purposelessness - dead life in a dead world. 

And Beuys saw that the escape from dead-ly materialism was forward-and-through - and out the other side - by a spiritual repetition (individually, and socially) of Christ's death and resurrection.   

Christ is not symbolized: he is real! 

Christ is not a symbol for something else. He is the substance in himself. It means life, it means power - the power of life. 

Christ has already brought life. Without the substance of Christ the earth would already have died. 

So Christ is not a symbol of something... I always fear this application of 'symbols'. 

 

The most important power exists in Christ, in the elements and substance of Christ. He is a germination: the idea of the Son coming-out from spiritual entities (abstractly called 'God'). 

In the Christ element, the spiritual entities are showing the reality that this element also exists in humankind itself. We can speak of the human being because this element exists in him. 

The most important declaration of Christ in that Man is the spiritual co-operator*. This shifts the whole energy-problem to the spiritual abilities of the people, of humankind. 

Interviewer: When you say we do not need mediators between gods and people in our times, do you mean that this is a task we have to do ourselves, now?

Beuys: Yes, sure: certainly. 

And we can do it ourselves. But there must first appear, or should appear - and in fact appears already in humankind - a kind of interest to ask; and that is surely a necessity. 

To approach an understanding of world, and Man, and nature; asks for a very individual methodology. An individual mentality or ability...

At present the churches avoid speaking about the possibilities of humankind using such soul-powers, will-powers; powers of thought; and intuition, imagination and inspiration - and to come with this kind of 'ability' towards such an understanding.  

 

We need to understand that to reach the earthly condition of materialism, and to get incarnated with this idea of death; there must be a resurrection...

The Christ spirit was related to the development of the idea of analysis [leading to materialism]. 

The whole range of philosophy throughout the Western world shows more and more this analytic way, and reaches a materialist consciousness. Thus it comes to death, like Christ. 

So, in the Western world there is a kind of repetition of the mystery of Christ's life and death. It ends with the fact that we now have a materialist understanding of the world. And because of this spiritual declaration of the material intention, materialism (as a whole) is a spiritual thing...

First the earth was dead in part; but Men have long been giving death to death - they have added death articles to death principles. 

So now our earth is dead! How can this death be surpassed, renewed, regenerated? That is the great question.

Only humankind can do this. Only. Nobody else. People must do it. Men are now totally responsible for the fate of the earth and for life on earth. 

We must see that all is alive - and surpass death. 

Solving the problem of life and death is the mission of the methodology of materialism. 

People have to die, in a way; have to feel what death means - have to reach the earth. 

Death belongs to life, you know! In the spiritual meaning, life is not possible without death. 

That sounds like mysticism, but is not, because this mystery is experienced by everybody. 

People have to have, and to develop, another understanding than the materialistic understanding - which is only looking for power to exploit, with a distorting and debasing understanding of energies.

Everything depends on us! 

It is absolutely necessary to see that everything depends on us; and that we can do it! 

Very easily we can do it - it is not so difficult to do.

The whole power exists with the people. But if the the people do not use it, then the regressive powers will get stronger. 

In future; we need the strongest of human spirits - those who are able to resist in the middle of the shit! 

Who live in the midst of things; and who feel that their own abilities can only grow in the midst of problems. 

Not those who want a kind-of weak environment with a kind-of 'spiritual feeling'... 

*Meaning - Man's cooperation with God has been necessary since the time of Christ, and is ever more necessary. This is clear from (too spread-out to summarize) remarks made elsewhere. 

*

I used to be fascinated, and quite powerfully attracted, by successful fake art - art which was bad yet prestigious - especially art where I could see how it was done.

I think this may be a much more general phenomenon than just a personal idiosyncrasy, because so many people purport to value as art what is obviously bad art or not-art-at-all - I the reason is not far to seek (in my case).

It is the hope that if they can get away with it, then so might I.

*

So, by supporting bad art, I was supporting a situation in which I might myself become recognized as a high status artist - and get access to what seemed like a very pleasant lifestyle of doing whatever I wanted to do then other people saying it was intresting (and paying me for it) simply because it was I who had done it.

*

An example would be Joseph Beuys whose work I first saw in a reverential display at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol - an almost painfully stylish setting.

When I say reverential, I should note that not only were the man's 'legendary' hat and boots on display, but also (I kid you not) his toenail clippings.

Essentially, the idea behind this exhibition (and the general idea of those who revered Beuys) was that Beuys was not so much an artist, but that art was whatever Beuys did - or, if he didn't do anything, then it was the man himself - or descriptions, photographs or movies of him.

So although Beuys never produced any art at all, let alone art of good quality, he was guaranteed status, income and goodness knows what else, merely by being.

This sounded to me like a good life!

*

So, to a substantial extent, I bought-into the world of conceptual/ happening/ performance art; in which the accolade of artist was bestowed apparently at random, and where (in fantasy at least) anyone could be made an artist; at which point, they would be 'made'.

For similar reasons I wasted a silly amount of time and attention on poetry and music and prose which I knew was bad, but of a kind whose manufacture I felt myself capable.

In other words, I preferred fake creativity to real creativity because - as a reasonably intelligent person - I realized that fake creativity was within the grasp of anyone of reasonable intelligence who was reasonably knowledgeable about the field in question.

Looking around, I think the same kind of thing must be going on on a large scale.

*

One of Rudolf Steiner's deepest prophetic hints was from a series of lectures in late 1917 which were collected and published in 2004 under the title Secret Brotherhoods and the Mystery of the Human Double. 

(All the lectures are also available free on the Rudolf Steiner Archive as GA 178, although these translations are less comprehensible than the 2004 collection.) 

I have been re-reading these remarkable works - as always sifting and reinterpreting Steiner's valid 'raw insights' from the (wrong) metaphysical schema and his frequent errors of overelaboration. 

Steiner's prediction was that through the twentieth century and into the next, the demonic powers, assisted by their human servants (i.e. the 'secret brotherhoods' of the book title - nowadays broadly corresponding to the highest human levels of component institutions of the global totalitarian System) would have the primary strategy of convincing the masses that this is a wholly material world. 

This is the ideology we may call leftism; but which is in essence identical with philosophical materialism/ positivism/ reductionism/ scientism. 

Indeed, so successful has this strategy been, and so dominant and habitual its world-view, that we do not have a generally-accepted name for it! Why name what (nearly-) everybody believes?

The reason behind this materialism project is demonic, in the sense that it is the most effective way of achieving mass damnation. 

In the past, it was necessary to induce Men to reject Christ and choose Hell in an explicit kind of way; but with global materialism Christ, God, creation, and the whole spiritual world are simply regarded as not-real, nonsense; a childish and foolish delusion.

The question of Jesus Christ has not been refuted by materialism, it has instead been rendered incomprehensible, meaningless, absurd! Which is far more effective.  

But the plan of materialism needed to account for Man's perennial seeking for 'spiritual' meaning; for something beyond the mundane - and Steiner perceived that therefore there would need to be ways of rendering and reducing 'the spiritual' to the material. 

So that people who regarded themselves as spiritual would actually conceptualize 'spiritual' in a materialist way - without realizing the fact!

And this is precisely what has happened with the New Age tendency in spirituality; which itself evolved and expanded from roots in 'Eastern' or 'Perennialist' Beat Generation in the 1950s, then 1960s Hippy spiritualties.  

What happens in such 'spiritualities' is that the spiritual is very rapidly 'operationalized' as something material. 

Most obviously there tends to be a focus on this world rather than life beyond death; thi world is seen as the most urgent, the most important, the most real - eventually the only really-real. Therefore, the New Age assimilated to mainstream Leftist political ideologies and projects...

Perhaps the commonest example is when spirituality or consciousness is interpreted as an abstraction therefore not as personal - and using terms from physics; as when New Agers talk - and think! - about spirit in terms of energy, light, vibrations and frequencies. 

Another spiritual reduction is when there is a focus upon Healing - and the bulk of New Age spirituality gravitates towards some model of Healing or Therapy - which is both this-worldly, and rooted in feelings, which are substantially material phenomena since they depend on the body and brain, and can be (to some extent) manipulated and controlled.

Thus we arrive at the typical New Age spirituality - rooted in this world, and in feelings; and spiritual practices (such as meditation) become a type of psychotherapy.  

Ironically, Anthroposophy has itself taken exactly this path into materialism; and (in its institutional manifestations) has consequently become assimilated into mainstream materialistic leftism. This tendency towards abstraction (including physics metaphors) is seem in Steiner's metaphysics, and his explanation of the nature of Christ. 

And the energies of 'Steinerism' became focused on the institution (Anthroposophical Society) rather the individuals; and on the 'applied' materialistic and this-worldly aspects in medicine, education, agriculture etc. 

Furthermore (and Steiner himself had encouraged this) the legacy of Steiner became materialistic - with 'expertise' being understood in terms of comprehensive and accurate scholarship of 'what Steiner said' on this, that and the other - regarded as de facto infallible. 

Therefore, Steiner's greatest 'disciples' - who are all more or less 'heretical' in terms of the materialist orthodox interpretations rooted in 'what Steiner said' - have been largely ignored, rejected or unnoticed - for example Valentine Tomberg (expelled), Owen Barfield (marginalized), or Joseph Beuys (unnoticed). 

Looking back over the past century we can easily see that Steiner was profoundly correct about the way in which materialism has triumphed - explicitly in the realm of public discourse; and implicitly in a great deal of the 'spirituality' of today; which is characterized by abstraction, usage of 'scientistic' vocabulary and concepts, and a focus on 'therapy and 'making this world a better place'.  

What is needed is almost the opposite - and Steiner also said this in these lectures; which is to regard the universe as a creation populated with personal Beings - not abstractions; and therefore true spirituality as consisting in a personal relationship with the many spiritual-Beings - such as God, Jesus Christ, angels, the 'so-called dead', and indeed aspects of other Mortal Men.  

And, on the other side - the side of evil; the capacity to recognize that evil is also personal not abstract; therefore purposive, not accidental. 

From this comes our only genuine defense against the dark arts of evil which is recognition, understanding, and rejection - rejection by means of affiliation with God, which (as of 2022) must come through commitment to following Jesus Christ.  

Note: the term 'defense against the dark arts' is a reference to the Harry Potter series of novels; which I am currently re-reading with pleasure and profit.