The multiples of Joseph Beuys

Warmth

‘Warmth’ or ‘warm energy’ was the vehicle with which Beuys hoped to realise his creative ambitions. Beuys viewed warmth as an energy that enters into matter, but is itself immaterial and therefore spiritual. Circulating freely within physical substances, warmth acts as an animating force and thus becomes a catalyst for change. This is why he often described it as an ‘evolutionary’ power or trigger.¹

Beuys’s artworks are replete with materials that he regarded as bearers of warm energy. By transmitting this energy to viewers of his works, they could bolster the capacity of each to instigate her own creative processes, whether social, spiritual or artistic. Typical examples of Beuys’s warmth-bearing substances were fat, felt, honey and copper. Since each is soft and pliant, it can readily assume new forms and is therefore well-suited to modelling the process of change. Each also bears connotations of physical warmth. Felt and fat, for instance, serve an insulating function, while copper conducts electricity. Honey brings warmth to the body through its consumption and digestion. The physical properties of such materials play an important role in understanding his oeuvre. Yet they must also be regarded in their symbolic function. At this level they appeal to spectators to grow more flexible in their behaviour and help change society at large.

See, for instance Beuys’s comments on warmth and evolution in Rainer Rappmann, Peter Schata and Volker Harlan, Soziale Plastik: Materialien zu Joseph Beuys (Achberg: Achberger Verlagsanstalt, 1976), 89. ↩

Glossary