The Curious Curator's Book Blog

Selected transcripts, in Portuguese, from Joseph Beuys' intervention at Documenta V, in 1972. Beuys is a controversial figure - it's easy to be ambivalent not just towards him, but also towards his art. Personally, I believe that you can’t separate the art from the artist, and this is especially true in the case of Beuys. He implicitly defended this idea himself, by discussing his art in the context of his life experiences.

The introduction does a good job at addressing the controversies, even if it's written in a language that has too many flourishes for my taste (something that I’ve noticed is quite common in Portuguese art writing).

The conversations themselves are at times lucid and thought-provoking, other times confusing, the ideas truncated, enunciated and shot down in the next turn of phrase. Still, it must have been a truly unique experience, and the book captures part of it and transforms it into something new. Recommended.