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A characteristic feature of Joseph Beuys is the identification with everything from mythological figures and historical personages to writers and artists. Edvard Munch is one of them. Beuys developed an interest in Munch towards the end of the 40s, when he was going through an existential crisis, partly attributable to splitting up with his childhood sweetheart. In a long series of drawings from this period, Beuys explores woman, love and death, for example in Loving Couple (1948-49), Autumn of Life (1952) and Death and the Maiden (1957). We recognise Munch's ambivalent attitude to woman in a number of these, where she is portrayed as a blend of the fascinating and fear-inspiring - as a dual symbol of eroticism and death. Most of Beuys's drawings are variations on one theme: Woman. She is portrayed as girl, mother, witch, goddess, virgin, amazon, etc. A common feature of them all is Beuys's identification with the forces of woman, as the antithesis of the crystalline hardness of man and intellect. The drawing Untitled (Blouse) (undated) is a direct reference to Munch's Puberty. The crossed arms form the same triangular composition as in Munch's painting. Yet whereas Munch's young girl radiates uncertainty and perhaps fear at the prospect of her awakening sexuality, in Beuys the "virginal" type of woman is a reference to potential fertility. For him, the female body becomes a concrete expression of a symbol of a particular aspect of the creative process: Woman is a creature who is productive on more levels than man. |
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