"Please don't touch the fat." In 2017, I found myself standing in a contemporary art museum in Berlin, Germany, in a room filled with enormous wedges of tallow. It was an exhibit of Joseph Beuys: “Unschlitt” (1977). 20 tons of tallow fat in The Hamburger Bahnhof. Just an enormous room filled with enormous blocks of fat. Totally weird experience.
Weirded still, there was a squat, frog-like man in an large, threadbare, ill-fitting guard's uniform, standing there looking bored. He was dark, and I wondered whether he was an immigrant - perhaps a refugee. And I wondered whether he called his family back home, perhaps they lived in a war-torn country. And I wondered whether he declined to relay the specifics of his job.
He was standing there all day watching the fat. To make sure no one messed with the fat.
Totally weird.
Of course, this is all fantasy. He probably rotated rooms every few hours. And he probably grew up in Berlin. But still. It was a weird scene.
One of the blocks was unceremoniously belted with a metal band, held into place with metal spikes, because it was visibly cracking and falling apart.
I can't get over how wonderful and weird it was.
Bueys was a German WWII pilot who was shot down in Austria, suffered massive burns in the crash, and was rescued and nursed back to health by Austrian mountain peasants; they wrapped him in hay and mud and kept him hidden, if I recall. His art was as much 'a way of being' as it was a thing he made - in the same way that Buckminster Fuller's design was a way of seeing things from a different perspective (i.e., 'Spaceship Earth'). Beuys famously said 'everyone is an artist'.
Anyway, I'll never forget being in that room of fat.
I'm very happy with this one as the fine point pen created shading that comes across as pencil. The final frame falls apart, a bit, but the first three are spot on.
"Please don't touch the fat." In 2017, I found myself standing in a contemporary art museum in Berlin, Germany, in a room filled with enormous wedges of tallow. It was an exhibit of Joseph Beuys: “Unschlitt” (1977). 20 tons of tallow fat in The Hamburger Bahnhof. Just an enormous room filled with enormous blocks of fat. Totally weird experience.
ReplyDeleteWeirded still, there was a squat, frog-like man in an large, threadbare, ill-fitting guard's uniform, standing there looking bored. He was dark, and I wondered whether he was an immigrant - perhaps a refugee. And I wondered whether he called his family back home, perhaps they lived in a war-torn country. And I wondered whether he declined to relay the specifics of his job.
He was standing there all day watching the fat. To make sure no one messed with the fat.
Totally weird.
Of course, this is all fantasy. He probably rotated rooms every few hours. And he probably grew up in Berlin. But still. It was a weird scene.
One of the blocks was unceremoniously belted with a metal band, held into place with metal spikes, because it was visibly cracking and falling apart.
I can't get over how wonderful and weird it was.
Bueys was a German WWII pilot who was shot down in Austria, suffered massive burns in the crash, and was rescued and nursed back to health by Austrian mountain peasants; they wrapped him in hay and mud and kept him hidden, if I recall. His art was as much 'a way of being' as it was a thing he made - in the same way that Buckminster Fuller's design was a way of seeing things from a different perspective (i.e., 'Spaceship Earth'). Beuys famously said 'everyone is an artist'.
Anyway, I'll never forget being in that room of fat.
I'm very happy with this one as the fine point pen created shading that comes across as pencil. The final frame falls apart, a bit, but the first three are spot on.