Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers and James Lee Byars. Everyone is an Artist

About

Contemporaries and collaborators, Beuys, Broodthaers, and Byars adhered to a similar broad set of ideas: art cannot be separated from life, an object can create narrative, and art is activated by the imagination of the viewer. Everyone is an Artist charts and interweaves the oeuvres of these three highly influential artists as they reshaped how art was created and perceived in the 20th and 21st centuries.

“Everyone is an artist” is a direct quote from and a guiding principle of Beuys. Coming out of World War II, Beuys cultivated a body of work based on personal history, and potentially myth, about his Nazi plane crashing over the Crimean front in Ukraine and his rescue by a nomadic tribe of Tartars. Through the use of ‘actions’ and objects linked to his personal story, Beuys evoked collective memory and healing. Throughout his life, Beuys believed that art was not a career separate from society, instead creativity and the need to express it are essential to being human.

First a poet, Broodthaers launched into visual art in 1964 through his first gallery solo show at Galerie Saint Laurent in Brussels titled I, too, wondered whether I couldn’t sell something and succeed in life, in which he presented his unsold poetry books encased in plaster. Broodthaers’ brief, but consequential, output in visual art used language and everyday objects loaded with societal and personal meaning to question the validity of cultural memory, history, and institutions.

The work of Beuys and Broodthaers is transcendent in the work of the slightly younger Byars. Both Beuys and Broodthaers supported Byars’ career, and each participated in his performances. In Byars, Beuys and Broodthaers saw the refinement of their ideas. A shaman-like figure, Byars saw life, and therefore art, as defined by impermanence. To him, objects were vessels to present expansive and existential themes, including beauty, perfection, and death, and the viewer is essential to shaping their meaning. Byars’ work informed the direction of conceptual art in the latter part of the 20th century and continues to resonate with artists today.

Everyone is an Artist includes Beuys’ iconic “Jason” and “SåFG”, Broodthaers’ important installation “Dites partout que je l’ai dit”, and Byars’ pivotal “The American Flag” and “The Figure of Death”. The exhibition presents a rare opportunity to see these three seminal artists in direct dialogue with each other.