Sale: 519 / Post War / Cont. Art II, June 19. 2021 in Munich Lot 415

 

415
Joseph Beuys
Enterprise 18.11.1972, 18:5:16, 1973.
Multiple. Metal box, black-and-white photograph...
Estimate:
€ 10,000 / $ 10,800
Sold:
€ 18,750 / $ 20,250

(incl. surcharge)
Enterprise 18.11.1972, 18:5:16. 1973.
Multiple. Metal box, black-and-white photograph, Synchro Box Agfa camera, felt,.
Schellmann 72. Signed and numbered on a paper strip insert into the camera. With the edition plate on one side of the metal box. From an edition of 24 copies. 16 x 41 x 31 cm (6.2 x 16.1 x 12.2 in).
The photography by Michael Ruetz shows the Beuys family watching the science fiction show 'Star Trek' on TV on November 18, 1972. Published by Edition Hundertmark, Berlin.
• "To me each edition has the character of a condensation nucleus to which many things can attach." (Beuys, Dec.1970 in catalog raisonné Multiples p. 15)
• Felt as isolator to protect the camera lense.
• When opening the box the observer sees the viewers and is observed
.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Germany (acquired from the artist).

EXHIBITION: Joseph Beuys: Wo ist Element 3?, Ketterer Kunst, Berlin, March 26 – May 22, 2021.

Michael Ruetz's photograph shows the Beuys family watching the science fiction TV series "Enterprise." The year the photo was shot the family lived on Drakeplatz 4, where the artist had his studio and apartment. Beuys closed the lens of the camera mounted in the lid of the box with a piece of felt, similar to the television set in his action ‘Filz-TV‘, in which he covered the screen with a piece of felt. With this detail Beuys reacted to the camera‘s “mechanical” look and reversed the outward view through the heat-protecting felt insulator into an inward view. The zinc box contains two mounted objects, a dual strategy of parallel processes that Beuys often employed. Both of these objects address seeing in very different ways: Television itself, the family in front of camera and the photographer's eye, which, in turn, watches a movie that plays in the future, and a box camera that can capture what is seen, however, with a covered lens and thus a disabled function. The third element is the question regarding the picture itself and its preconditions. For the multiple, Beuys used an Agfa box camera, which first came out in 1930. Between 1949 and 1957 it was produced as a synchro-box version. Then there is the zinc box, which the artist used in many his works, and the name of the series, which is part of the title: ‘Enterprise‘, also means company, it is Beuys reference to his utopian concept of the social sculpture. [Eugen Blume]



415
Joseph Beuys
Enterprise 18.11.1972, 18:5:16, 1973.
Multiple. Metal box, black-and-white photograph...
Estimate:
€ 10,000 / $ 10,800
Sold:
€ 18,750 / $ 20,250

(incl. surcharge)