Yes, welcome. He was born on May 12th, exactly 100 years ago: the German artist with the hat and fishing vest. The man who turned fat and felt into art, who planted 7000 trees and explained pictures to a dead rabbit . What did this controversial Josef Boys want? What did his actions trigger, and what can art still achieve today? I'm now discussing this with Philip Urspruch, Professor of Art and Architectural History at ETH Zurich and author of a recently published monograph on Josef Boys. Welcome, Mr. Ursprung. Thanks. Yes, what do you consider to be the most important legacy of Josef Boy? What do we owe to this artist with the hat? He freed art from being preoccupied with itself. He brought it from the margins, uh, to the center of society, and he tried to democratize it, to show that art is not just for a select few , but is available to virtually everyone. And he even said that every person is an artist. That's a famous line from Boys. Yes, what he meant was that everyone has the potential to be creative and innovative, and everyone has the opportunity to live as if they were giving them orders themselves. He tried to extend the freedom that art enjoys to society as a whole. Mhm. So he made art a topic , not only for the art world, but for a broad public, and also emphasized the political relevance of art. Yes, for him, art, when it is led out of this self-absorption , is also a catalyst through which the most diverse forces and possibilities pass and are perhaps also amplified. And that includes politics very much. He also showed how politics can be transformed artistically . He calls it social sculpture. As if everyone together could shape and co-create politics. We'll talk about that later. But what's interesting about the character Boys is that he's not just an artist; you often get the impression that he himself is somehow one of his works of art, perhaps even the most important one. He understood almost from the beginning how important the personalization of art is, that this art is also embodied to some extent in the author, that he can be an actor, that he is also a teacher, a figure of identification, and then very early on he gave himself this outfit that immediately makes him recognizable: the hat, the fishing vest, the jeans. It is a collection of different attributes that cannot be clearly reduced to one thing, but which are certainly somewhat different from, for example, the suit with tie or, uh, the work clothes, i.e., the hat. Um, there are many different ways to interpret that. For me, it's somewhat an emblem of the 1920s. I simply can't help but see Charlie Chaplin with Trump in it. The vest, it's the tool of the trade, uh, someone who always has a few tools, a few pencils, a few pairs of pliers available, and the jeans, that's the work attire. Mhm. It's interesting. It's true, one can speculate a lot about these things. So, the hat is also made of felt, a material that we will talk about later , which plays an important role in it , as does fat. Um, but in their Boys biography, or rather Boys monograph, they chose a different approach, not primarily through the person, but through individual works and milestones. Why then? Yes, Boys is extremely well researched and described. There is a wealth of excellent books and studies, catalogues about him, and for a long time it was said that Boys could only be explained by Boys . Therefore, one must consider the work in its inherent sense . Then there was a phase where it was said that boys could only be explained by ideology, e.g. Rudolf Steiner. And uh, I have tried, um, also now with regard to the somewhat greater temporal distance, uh, to find a different approach and uh, to move almost like a tourist uh in an exhibition uh or landscape , where I then visit 24 works that are particularly fascinating to me and go there together with the readers, as if I were uh seeing them for the first time. That's obviously not the case, but they write in the book that they avoided boys for a long time. Why? Yes, I am an art historian and am of course, uh, part of a research landscape. Uh, there has been so much interpretation of "Boys". He was so surrounded by performers that I felt like wherever I went, I was stepping into a blunder and getting too close to someone who had already figured out much more. Mhm. Uh, and this fixation on certain interpretations, certain schools, that also put me off to some extent. I was naturally attracted to the work, but at the same time, I was put off by its reception history and by the sometimes rather bitter claim to have the right keys . Yes, and the whole reception is very polarized, with veneration on one side and demonization on the other. What happened to you while you were writing? Did you learn anything new about it? What would you say? Was that the big eye-opener ? Yes, I feel similarly, the longer I have dealt with it and also after I have seen certain works again or for the first time, the picture of Boys has become much larger and more differentiated. So, I have, for example, seen and learned about the political aspect in a new light. And above all, I also saw anew how the sculptural, formal, and atmospheric quality of the works impressed me. Hmm, something that I may have lost sight of if I focused too much on it through books . And in principle, it's also an appeal to go there again . Some of these exhibitions are now almost a bit dusty. There 's some party involved, but I'd like to go there again now and see how it works and how it works spatially. The encounter with the works also showed me another boy that I had expected him. Mhm. So this sculptural aspect, as you say, is very important. Boys was originally a sculptor, made many drawings and sculptures, but then in the 1960s he suddenly introduced new materials . They already mentioned felt, which also goes with the felt hat. Um, but then there's also a whole piano, a grand piano, uh, which he covers with felt and grease, of course, the famous grease chair. So, he smears grease on a chair or in the corners. This was of course a scandal at the time and in the art world of that era. And in 1969 there was a famous exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern by Harald Seemann. Various avant-garde artists were also exhibited there, including Boys. And we'll take a quick look to get an impression . So, here we see Josef Boys handling the grease and smearing it into the cracks and corners . And in the background you can hear a sound system making those typical absurd Nonsense Boys noises. Let's let that sink in for a bit . Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no, no, no. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Boys then said the following: Uh, I'm trying to provoke something with this. I am looking to trigger something in people, perhaps something that is anchored in the subconscious. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no, no, no. Yes, that was a radical gesture at the time. The Kunsthalle Bern has said, " We will never exhibit again, Boys, we will not do it anymore ." But that's hard to understand today. I then naturally wonder, can we still understand the meaning of his works if we can no longer experience the power of his gestures ? Yes, that's one of the hypotheses I've tried to test. Is it really true, as many say, that when he is absent, we can no longer properly perceive the work? And they are relics of action. I would n't claim that, I would revise that statement. I would say that the works definitely work. Of course, it is important and helpful to hear the stories, the origins, and his or other comments on them, but the works themselves are essential; without the works themselves, Boys wouldn't be there and would n't be there anymore. But there is this documentation, the video and so on, the audio recordings. Um, and they would say that you still have to see it live, so to speak. There's something else to it . The fats are gone now, of course. The art gallery has been rebuilt several times. Uh, and this is of course an action that has now been recorded. And when we see a fat corner, there are still very few of which are still old, they are indeed somewhat bleak. The stool containing fat still exists. Uh, and I was interested in the fact that, for example, we don't know exactly how it came about . Yes, and looking back, especially thanks to the films of the campaign, I tried to reconstruct how it was done back then. And he used fat in the 60s primarily, as he says here, to provoke; it was also a strong didactic material, namely to test the expectations of the audience . Uh, they're the last people who would expect you to smear a room with grease, because you're actually supposed to keep the room grease-free by constantly cleaning it, right? And uh, if we follow what he does here, that instead of clarifying the space, instead of purifying it, instead of abstracting it, uh, um, he smears it. Mhm. And at the same time shows how he gets to work. One could say he prepares, he impregnates, he treats. He establishes a kind of relationship between his body, and therefore also our body, and the environment, and perhaps thereby allows us to see the architecture, the surroundings, the space differently. So he does n't just place a sculpture in a room without commenting on it, but rather he does what one doesn't usually do. The museum should not be touched; he is about to attack the museum. Exactly . And that is still not only pleasant to see now, because it reminds us of perhaps unconsciously early childhood times, of dirt, of feces, of impurity and disorder. And perhaps this disorder, this uncontrollable, this potentially infiltrating material, is precisely something that has to do with the function of art . Yes, of course. And in doing so, he naturally changes our view of what is not art, of the space that is actually there for the exhibition, and he changes our concept of art itself, as you said, by declaring something to be art that is generally the opposite of art, namely a piece of fat. Um, after this film, I can't really look at the Bären art gallery the same way anymore, as if it did n't exist, right? So a trace of it remains . Yes, so one can say that it changes art and that this cannot really be reversed . This is perhaps also a question of what its historical rank is in art history? Mhm. Now, in addition to the grease, there's also the famous felt. What's the story behind this ? Why does he keep coming back to this material? Felt, like fat, was of course an unexpected material for a sculptor at that time. It's like fat changes, it can become stagnant, it can also start to smell . Well, felt is, um, difficult to keep in a clear shape. It needs to be rolled or fixed in place so that it retains its shape. This contradicts the prevailing idea of ​​sculpture being made from a permanent, fixed, unchanging material. It's interesting because it's made up of a great many hairs and is, of course, a material that everyone has experienced and knows, because it's also very inexpensive and has incredibly good properties. This is an everyday material that suddenly appears in art, and then you have to ask yourself: do I even need steel or glass or other materials? not as smooth as the other materials, not as cold. It is warm and soft. It is soft, and if we consider him again as a sculptor, the great challenge of sculpture is how to represent the body, to represent the human body, and he said there must be alternatives to the solid statue. For him, this is very strongly associated with the sculpture tradition during the Second World War in the dictatorship, where he says everything was filled with these sculptures. So, how can I represent the human body? not as a rigid, unchanging heroic figure, like a tank, but how can I represent the entrails, the intestines, the vulnerable parts of the body? Therefore, felt and fat are certainly elements that allow us to rethink the representation of humans in art a little further . Now, Boys wouldn't be Boys if he didn't have a story of his own about this fat and felt. And he tells a myth, which has now been debunked as a myth , namely that he, as a pilot, said he crashed over Crimea during the Second World War, which is also not true; he was a radio operator in an aircraft, and that so- called Tatars cared for him, rubbed his wounds with grease, and kept him warm with felt. And this story was naturally passed on until someone eventually investigated and realized that it wasn't true at all. He was simply found by German search and rescue teams and cared for in a military hospital . Why does Boys invent such myths about himself? Yes, the myth slowly emerged in the 70s and was practically there by the end of the 70s, when he had his biggest and most important exhibition at the Guckenheim Museum in New York. uh prominently featured in the catalog uh presented and uh naturally begins this process of polarizing perception. Why, uh, why did Mythos work? One explanation is, uh, his own role in the war, namely as a professional soldier, uh, a volunteer in the air force, so by no means a victim, by no means uh, in the resistance, but rather someone who is enthusiastic at the beginning, that is his own role. Uh, how can you even depict them? And uh, he chooses this myth, a mixture of fiction and facts, where the war, the situation of the war, the situation, one could say, of Germany at war is linked through his biography. Mhm. Uh, if we read the myth as being applied to the situation in Germany , it is the rise of the warrior who ultimately crashes, loses the war, and is forgiven . So in the post-war decades, Germany was essentially lifted off the ground again by the Marshall Plan and the treaties . That is to say, this myth connects, and indeed as tightly as felt, if you will, all these different strands, and cannot be completely deciphered. One can, of course, say that it is not true. But as I said, one can describe a myth as true or not true . Uh, the second or the further element is simply that it provides something like a key to meaning for felt and grease, i.e., these two irritating materials. Aha. He works with felt and grease because it saved him back then. And that is an answer to a riddle, which one can of course use again and again with pleasure, because with it, if you will, a riddle is solved. And I believe that these two things lead to the myth having power, and the third, of course, the ambivalence. So, is it possible that the most important German artist is also voluntarily participating in this war as a warrior and has declared it as such? Yes, exactly. And we will talk about these ambivalent contradictions, about these abysses of dark times, in a moment . But I believe this war was also a key event for him. Some even speak of a trauma. Uh, he was also depressed in the 1950s. Would you also say that this experience had traumatic after-effects? I ca n't judge that at all. However, I criticize the reception that tries to explain Boys through trauma, because of course it was primarily the victims of war and the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants, the surviving survivors, who were traumatized, and the fixation on Boys' trauma, that he, as a fallen warrior, sinks into a depression and renews himself there, I find that very problematic. uh because she stylizes him into a uh suffering figure and thus distracts from the actual victims. Uh, and that's why I'm trying a different approach. I am not trying to explain the renewal of his art as a consequence of depression, but rather as a result of a confrontation with the history of the Holocaust, namely when he was asked to design a Holocaust monument for a competition . uh, for the first time really takes notice. Yes, that's interesting, but there are also those who oppose the opposing view, which is strongly represented, namely the accusation against Boys, not that he embellished or falsified his biography , but that he didn't deal enough with his Nazi past . Well, it all started back in 2008, when art historian Beat Wies called him an eternal Hitler Youth. Uh, as you already mentioned, Boys volunteered for the war, and it has also been found out that even in the 1970s his immediate circle consisted of a strikingly large number of Altnis. And someone who strongly emphasizes these dark sides of Boys is the Boys biographer Hans Peter Riegel. Let's listen to her for a moment . Boys felt German in every phase of his existence. He understood himself in every phase of existence as having essentially grown out of this soil, as he himself said. In his book, Riegel proves that his immediate circle from the 1970s consisted of former Nazis. His personal secretary, Karl Fastbend, was an SS man from the very beginning. Boys had allowed himself to be nominated for the Action Group of Independent Germans even before the Green Party was founded. A party with clearly right-wing nationalist ideology. Yes, Mr. Ursprung, there are indeed a striking number of brown stains in Boys' biography. How do you deal with that ? Yes . This is very important, and it's something Hans Peter Riegel and others have researched in recent years . They present a new and differentiated picture of boys and raise questions that were previously suppressed or not addressed in the reception. This means that the picture becomes more differentiated, and it leads us to ask ourselves once again : is myth a means of revealing or of suppressing? So, is the war, or the perpetratorship, put up for discussion, or is it sublimated and artistically disguised, right? And in principle, both answers are possible. I believe both interpretations are legitimate to some extent. Uh, Boys actually exhibited at Document 5 for 100 days in the 70s together with Karl Fastaben, for example, and I just wondered, after reading Riegel's book, how did he come to do that? He could have taken a student along. Uh, why, why this person with the severe parting, uh, who looked completely different, I can't quite answer that. One hypothesis is, uh, firstly, he asks less about where he comes from, what he did before, but rather what he is doing now. So it's not so much the past that interests them, but rather their current activities. So it seems he's capable of not continuing to advocate that view. The other thing is, uh, he wants to show, but he was also involved with this AOD, this Action Group of Independent Germans, which was clearly nationalistic . Yes, the AOD is of course also involved; there is a very good book about the early days of the Greens by Silke Mendes, who presents this in a differentiated way. The AOD, like many of these grassroots or early splinter movements, is a melting pot of different nuances, and the protagonist actually played a role during the Nazi era . However, he is leaving the party. After the war, he joined the CDU, or rather, he's getting closer to it again . So, it's a dazzling juxtaposition, and Boys has it for tactical reasons, because the AOD offered that even non-party members could join us on the list . Bo himself speaks of an intermediate trick. Uh, so he wants to go into politics, but he does n't want to join forces with the established police parties because he's against them, so basically only the AUD remains. Uh, with that he'll just be on the list and then the Greens will be founded. So, the Greens do n't even exist yet, but the AOD, uh, figures are also emerging within the Greens . The Green Party is of course a party that encompasses a spectrum from the right, uh, where we have former Nazis, to the far left, uh, peace activists, feminists. All these facets come together and to say, Boys is practically affine to the attitude of the house manager because he is in coalition with them, uh, we can't or I can't really, mhm. to sign, because what he says and does in the programs contradicts their stance. But within the coalition, that has to be admitted. But of course, there are statements that Riegel quotes, in which he still talks about the German genius and the resurrection power of the German people in the 1980s. I believe that shouldn't be ignored. And another important accusation by Riegel is that Boys was strongly influenced by the controversial anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, whom they have already mentioned, also by his esoteric thinking, occultism, and belief in spirits. And Steiner also has this terrible racial theory. Um, and much of Boys's work has been adopted verbatim, including, in part, the understanding of these materials, such as fat as a transitional material from mind to matter, for example, or the understanding of animals, which play an important role at Boys, namely animals as an earthly form of spiritual beings. Was Boys now a crude esotericist? Um, did he see himself, as he is often described, as a shaman? Yes, not in my, uh, interpretation. Uh, but he is like a sponge and absorbs various ideas, buildings, ideologies and transforms them. Eh, stones are eeh, quite essential. So he became involved with Steiner very early on, reads a great deal, and I would also say that many of the ideas and formulations of the images can be traced back to Steiner. OK. Mm. Um, I think it's too simplistic to say that the work is, so to speak, an illustration of Steiner. uh because Steiner himself tries to illustrate himself and that's not really uh understandable. So, the idea that anthroposophical architecture, anthroposophical art, is an attempt to visualize this, and reducing it to that would mean that it is essentially absorbed into it. Um, well, it's a formative influence, but one of several, you would say. I would say it's like a framework, a worldview that gives Boys, uh, support, that serves as a guide from which he then further develops his art. Yes. Uh, but I ca n't see it as the reason for everything he does , because then it would be just another documentation of Steiner's cosmos. But of course, there is also a lot of crude, partly racist, partly from today's point of view completely questionable stuff in Steiner's teachings from the early 20th and late 19th centuries, and the discussion has to address that. That, uh, needs to be discussed . So, once again, the question of abstract art, of the ideal of purity in art, is also not completely detached from racism and from a European-centralized worldview, which is of course present in Steiner's work. Yes. Mhm. Let's get more specific and look at how Boys treats animals. He is very interesting and was there very early on, and there is a work from 1965 where a hare plays a central role . The action is called "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Rabbit". Could you briefly explain what this performance looked like? This is the first look from a commercial gallery that Boys does, who says beforehand, I actually don't want to sell anything, I want to concentrate on teaching . In Düsseldorf's old town, there's a tiny gallery run by Schmela, and the visitors are invited on a November night , probably expecting a speech from the gallery owner or a theorist, but instead, they have to wait outside the gallery. Uh, the gallery owner also comes out and in the gallery window you can see, uh, boys with a gold-colored head with a rabbit on their lap. And he explains the gallery, the exhibition, to this rabbit. So, he got a preview while everyone else had to wait outside. The dead hare has a preview. He's in the picture, you can see over time that he's probably dead, but it probably was n't entirely clear back then either. Uh, there are film recordings where you can see him walking around the room with the rabbit, taking its paws in his hands, pointing at the pictures with its paws, clamping its ears in its teeth, as if the rabbit were alive or needed to be brought to life . And the character Boys with this white-gold head is also not clearly alive. It is a sculpture. Uh, that means who's actually dead now? Who explains something to whom? Uh, that's pretty open. And the nice thing is, of course, that human-animal communication is taking place, something that interests us very much today in light of the discussion about Anthropocene. What is the hierarchy between human, non-human, living, and non- living? All this happened there, and to this day we don't know what he said to the rabbit . This action is very strong as a gesture and is a great mystery. Well, there are also many clues, e.g. he has felt soles and I think copper soles or something like that on boys. Uh, and actually, you know you have no idea where to start and stop interpreting . Now the question arises: who actually determines what such actions mean in the art world ? Boys himself, if he had had some kind of explanation, an elucidation, the art experts, we all, um, how is art so open, as Umberto EO said, these are open works of art that allow any interpretation. There is no right or wrong. How do you approach this as an art historian? Yes, explaining pictures to a dead hare is, of course, like saying to me, " I feel like I am the addressee, because that is actually my job as an art historian: to explain pictures." Um, and uh, I also have to ask myself , how would I explain a dead animal—er, art? OK. So, the question of who interprets, which is of course up for discussion here, and since the dead hare essentially takes the secret to its grave, does that remain unsolved? Uh, Boys uh, he worked primarily during this time, which is different later, but in the 60s uh, he very much liked to use enigmatic , complicated titles whose interpretation is actually impossible . So one could say that he also wanted to be incomprehensible and enigmatic during this time. I would say, yes, it's about the fact that there are puzzles , uh, that we can treat as a common question. He once said that every mystery will eventually be solved. Uh, but I think the provocation is that he shows that art is also a means of asking questions, a means of gaining knowledge, e.g., knowledge about repressed historical material, about psychologically repressed material. So, it is a means of asking questions and a means of asking questions together. Do n't think he claims to have all these solutions, otherwise you wouldn't need to create art. Exactly . It's a nice quote from Boys, where he says: "Art is not meant to be interpreted, because otherwise you could just print the text and hang it up. Then there would be no need to make art." So it seems that it is somehow about this action, about these materials he chooses, that we are affected by this action, that it is not simply explained to us what he wants to say with it. Yes, the title also plays a crucial role. Uh, unlike many performers, I don't always find Boys' lyrics very insightful; I often find them very confusing. But the titles, uh, they're almost like the titles of a film or a book— entrances, uh, and you can't leave them out. Mhm. So the action, the performance back then in Düsseldorf without this title, makes no sense. The title is an essential component. Title and action are very closely linked, and it is possible to raise something within three or four words or a sentence that still interests us even after 60 years, and that is something where I see the sculptural and linguistic work as interconnected. Mhm. Mhm. You've already mentioned that. Boys questioned the very concept of art and attempted to expand it. He speaks of an expanded concept of art and of social sculpture. And what exactly that is was explained in a film document from 1984. At that time, the Zücherprayer Harald Negeli was extradited to Switzerland for property damage because he had sprayed on house walls, and Boys showed solidarity with him. Here we see the two of them together, and Boys explains his expanded concept of art in this video. Modern art cannot be the means to change society, let's say globally, but only an expanded concept of art that addresses every person as a potential artist . That means it all comes down to the creative point, to creativity as the starting point for change. This has its logical consequence, because the moment this is realized, it is also clear that money cannot be capital at all. The capital of society is the human capacity to do what people want, what they can do, what they, let's say, feel. This entire wealth of human creative power, as it is also said in German, is the real capital. Marx's ideology of capital was already flawed. So we need to change society in such a way that it builds something new, let's say, beyond communist and capitalist ideology, right? And therein lies the graffiti problem, therein lies Harald as a fighter in this, in this direction, right? So it's important that we don't just say "art" again and mean the art that's on the art market, but rather this new, the transformation, the expanded concept of art, the anthropological concept of art, the social art that everyone can do, in which everyone can participate, is therefore not, in principle, art that is reduced to painters, sculptors, musicians or dancers, but that this social art can be started in every profession, in every workplace . Yes, so that means art is essentially creativity. Regardless of whether it 's in a museum or not, does n't that mean that every action, every deed in public space or elsewhere that is somehow creative, if I now combine this space here , uh, is that then art? Where do you draw the line? What are the consequences of this? Yes, but you could say it's art, it's probably not very good art. Uh, maybe some people will shout about that, but probably not. Yes, but uh, you could say it's also an artistic act. Art is, after all, a convention. What is art, and what is not art? Well, that's not something that's given, it's constantly being renegotiated. 5,600 years ago, the term did n't exist in our sense. It was defined much more strongly as something craft-related, for example, and Deby is of course not the only one. This discussion, which goes back to Marcel Duchon, occupies the entire modern world. So Marcelon, the artist who took a urinal and put it in a museum in 1917, I think, signed it, so the idea that everyday objects can suddenly be declared art. Yes, as soon as an object is in a museum , it is considered art, because that is practically the convention. If you throw the paper on the floor in the art gallery, we look at it differently than in a studio, right? Because then it's a different gesture. Again, it does n't have to be successful art, but it's certainly not a protected term. And what's interesting about this film clip is that it takes place on the border. This is the moment when Hard Nageli essentially surrenders to the Swiss authorities and then has to go to prison. It's almost unimaginable today that he had to go to prison . Uh, that means it's a border crossing, and the definition of art is also about borders. And B is actually someone who constantly explores, crosses, tests, and negotiates these boundaries. And it's understandable that if someone crosses borders, then border guards will come. This means that the entire discussion about buses is also always a discussion where bouncers, border guards of the art history of the rule of law, of politics, now almost have to come to the German-Swiss border. Bys deliberately stages it this way, saying, "Hey, this is the limit. Show me your papers." And that explains to me why the discussion about his role in war in the past is so vehement, because it actually makes these limits visible. So, where am I allowed to turn my past into a myth ? Where are the limits, and what is art even allowed to do? How much freedom is allowed in art ? And we see this discussion constantly. Riot is a case in point, how much freedom is given to art, and where is there too much? We can see this again and again with Bys, and it makes it clear to some extent whether you approve of everything he did or not. It's like looking back at him in a mirror, reflecting his past. Do I have to show my own limits by constantly touching on them? You even brought along a piece of artwork by Bys, a box, a wooden box. The title is, I think... Me, Intuition. Um, why is this art now, and um, what does this piece of wood mean? Uh, yes, it's a multiple, uh, from 1968, titled. Multiple means a, what does that mean, duplicated object, which he then also made available for sale . Yes. Yes. So, uh, Boys is interested in the democratization of art, and that also means the democratization of art ownership. Uh, he has many works that sell for extremely high prices. He was the most expensive artist, uh, in Europe at the end of the 60s, and uh, but then he also has works that everyone, uh, can afford, like Intuition. You could order it for eight marks, uh, by mail order. Um, about 10,000 of them were made. A small wooden box, many of them assembled themselves, and Tren wrote Intuition in pencil, and then there are two pencil lines underneath. One with, uh, um, boundaries , that would perhaps be something like rational thinking, thinking in fixed categories. And the Another line, which fades into infinity, so it's intuition that knows no bounds and remains open. Uh, then we have the signature Boys 68 on the back, so it's authorized. It's just one piece among many, many, many thousands, but uh, it's also one that Boys has handled. So, in a way, it's also unique, and he plays with this ambivalence— he calls it a vehicle. Uh, um, everyone can somehow participate in his art as an owner and then do what they want with it. The form is somewhere between sculpture and painting. There's a frame, but it stands; it doesn't need a base. That's what interested him in the sculpture, taking the sculpture off the base and placing it directly on the ground. I could use it as a base, and I can also use it as a form for content. I could simply put something there or stack it. So it's also a utilitarian object, and it's allowed to be. It's allowed to be. Yes, so for me, it is A bit like a talisman now. Um, it's about the size of my book, and it, uh, yeah, it's just sitting there. It's sturdy, you can pick it up . Mhm. Or put it down again. So, I ca n't have it on all day. We can put it down again. Exactly. Let's talk a little more about the bigger picture. What did Boys actually want? What did he have in mind, especially regarding a societal ideal, if we're talking about this expanded concept of art? We've seen two or three actions now. Um, there was also this quote about him wanting something different , something between capitalism and communism. What does Boys have in mind? You also mentioned this democracy, this grassroots democratic ideal, then there's Rudolf Steiner. Mhm. Well, I find his democratization of art more interesting than the model of democracy that he developed and propagated. But, uh, both are of course connected. So, if art is also supposed to have a political impact, if it was actually connected to politics as it is... dissatisfied, and dissatisfied with art as it is . So it's not that art is okay and politics isn't, as one might like to think, but both are not okay. And art should change into something else, and politics as well, right, through art. Through art, yes, the principle that actually dissolves the boundaries between the two, and his social model, which he developed from the early 70s onwards, is, firstly, direct democracy. That is, bypassing representation by the parties. He speaks of a party dictatorship. He speaks of the party dictatorship. That was a buzzword back then, not just for him, it was widespread . One must also remember that shortly before, Kiesinger was Chancellor, a former Nazi. That means the continuity of the democratic parties into the time of the national dictatorship is omnipresent. So he and many others distrust these parties and develop this A model of direct democracy that doesn't really work. He then runs for a party himself. He's a founding member of the Greens and then becomes a co-founder of the Greens. So, I think without that, we would be talking about Buss completely differently today. If that weren't the case, the reception would be entirely different. He actually participates in this party that is so successful today and has so drastically changed political life. We might say it's an art-historical case that has gradually closed. Well, there was also this project, for example, with the 7,000 oak trees that he had planted at Documenta 82, all over Castle, and next to each one a basalt stone. First, these 7,000 stones were piled up in a heap, and then the idea was to plant 7,000 oak trees and next to each one a basalt stone. There's also debate about the interpretation. There's also an anthroposophical interpretation. For example... The art critic Hanno Rauterberg also picks up on this in Die Zeit. He says, in a way, that one shouldn't hastily interpret this as a green action for ecology, but rather that Boys himself speaks of a symbol, that these oaks are for a new social order, speaks of a heat-time machine, and of how cosmic forces somehow enter the ground through these stones and then, through the roots, the city. So, again, a very esoteric interpretation. Hmm. He also shows again the ambivalence and the ultimately incomprehensible nature of these actions. Yes, on the one hand, it's a work that, unlike in the 60s, where we still understand the title puzzles immediately. 7000 oaks city administration instead of city administration, that doesn't need a long explanation. Uh, it's also incredibly complex because it involves years of political engineering. Dealing with authorities, with city planners, with landscape architects—well, they're not oaks. They're a whole host of different trees, placed in the right locations according to specific criteria. They were planted because oaks don't fit everywhere, so there was citizen participation involved, where they should be planted, and so on. It's a long-term project, another document begins there, where nothing is visible yet except the stones, and then the citizens of Kassel are involved. The anthroposophical side of the whole thing, the connection between the basalt, where this energy is channeled into the ground so that a tree can grow back out, is certainly one aspect. I believe it works both with and without it. Most people who visit the work today know nothing about it. Before, it was very important that the basalt and the roots touched. But that's interesting for the question of what kind of aesthetic one has. A production aesthetic or a reception aesthetic, let's say. So, if the intention of the producer, the artist in this case, Boys, was to incorporate some esoteric, let's say, anthroposophical ideas, then that carries more weight, I would say, intuitively than any other interpretations. Let's go past what Boys wanted with it. Um, if we take the artist's intention as the key to the work . Yes. But I would say that shouldn't be done. As an art historian, the artist's intention or ideology is one aspect among many, because if it had been about illustrating this stone model, a tree would have sufficed. I would argue that nobody would be interested in the work if it had been a single tree and a single stone. That means there are many factors that come together. Mhm. And the more, the better, of course, but also the more confusing. That's precisely what makes the discussion interesting. He also has to do fundraising for this project. It's incredibly expensive. A tree plus a stone costs about 500 marks, and the money isn't there. He goes so far as to do whisky advertising in Japan. So , he's not doing a public-private partnership. Something that then, for better or for worse, if you will, becomes part of the Urban planning will be. Uh, well, he's basically open to any means to complete the work. Uh, but I doubt that this is solely about an illustration of a stone concept, because the dimension, for example, wouldn't be necessary. Then you could say it's a model that I could make on a small scale, and the fact that he's not just planting trees naturally distinguishes it from landscape architecture. Because no landscape architect or urban planner would think of planting a stele from a nearby basalt quarry. That does n't really make sense. I mean, it also shows this contrast between the inorganic and the organic. So, over time, this tree grows, and the basalt stone always stays the same; the relationships shift, and so on. There are really many aspects involved, of course . Uh, let's come back to this. So, we were just talking about this green impulse that was supposed to change our society , more sustainability, how we treat animals, plants, and the environment. Uh, But then he also has quite a bit to say on the topic of the economic system, almost his own monetary theory, or at least some approaches to it. Yes, I find that highly interesting. He bases his thinking on Steiner's threefold model of society. It starts from the idea that there should be spheres of spiritual life, legal life, and economic life, each autonomous within itself. So, politics should n't control the economy, and conversely, the economy shouldn't control spiritual life. Perhaps one could define culture or the sciences as having this autonomy, which has always been an interesting model for thought. That's his foundation, and he then delves into anthroposophical outsiders like Wilhelm Schmund, a theorist who is probably otherwise completely forgotten, but who was nevertheless an important figure for the grassroots movement that led to the Greens. He adopts a part of Schmund's monetary theory, which he then further develops. To rephrase it again, and um, well, I ca n't completely break it down now, but what makes sense is that he said money shouldn't be hoarded, kept in circulation, but rather it loses its validity. It rusts if it isn't used as wages or as an investment. So it's actually a critique of the speculation of the financial industry, which is taken for granted today, but it was formulated in a slightly different way back then . Mhm. And, uh, that's where he, as an artist, addresses this important issue of the 70s, namely the recession and unemployment, which we might somewhat forget today because we want to distill art out of history. He makes suggestions on how to address this predicament. Mhm. And he also creates works like the Honey Pump at the workplace. A giant machine where honey circulates and, at the same time, a kind of perpetual workshop takes place where economic and political models are discussed. So, he connects art and discussion, and he never claimed to have the answer. These are suggestions, models, provocations, simply to benefit from the voice of art and critical thinking in the process . So that the discussion of economics isn't left exclusively to politics and economists. As we can see, this work is incredibly rich. There are also references to the Cold War, which he strongly emphasizes in the book. Even the song "Sonne statt Reaspiel" (Sun Instead of Reggae) alludes to Ron and Reagan. We could discuss this at length. Finally, perhaps the question: Boys has polarized opinion tremendously, not only back then, but again now on its centenary. Some revere him, others demonize him. Why is there no middle ground with this man? Well, he himself is always trying to mediate. Yes, he mediates between East and West, between capitalism and socialism, between the generation of the 20s and the younger generation. So he is a permanent mediator. Perhaps this position is simply occupied by him, and that's where one can......can no longer convey it. Interesting interpretation, I'll gladly accept that as my closing remark. Thank you very much, Mr. Urschwung, you're welcome . Yes, thank you for your thoughts as well. There's more about Boys this evening, if you're interested; at 11:40 a.m. we'll be showing the highly recommended documentary about Boys by Andreas Feil. Next week, Barbara Bleich will be speaking with cultural studies scholar Mitusal about the question of whether a white man should actually be allowed to translate a poem by a Black woman, and how fixed or fluid that thing we call our identity really is. But for now, we'll continue with dogs and cats and the question of what role these animals have played in art history. So stay tuned and have a wonderful Sunday.