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Rating: 
Summary: beware of the cult following
Review: It was the review above that put me off this book, but I read extracts from my university library and also consulted "joseph Beuys: the art of cooking" from the same author and found nothing of use, just a general rantings of the authors relationship to the artist. well, good for you - but how does this help me? or anyone else?
The author SEEMS to offer the same hero worship that Joseph Beuys was keen to escape from, given the dangers of idolising anyone, his critics certainly made a big deal of this (especially benjamin "quite mean" buchloh who compares Beuys to fascism and claims that a former luftwafe pilot cannot represent the art of post-war germany - but I say, look to your own problems in dealing with your national identity in the climate of psychological post-war reconstruction and leave the do-gooders be) and the image tends to override everything else - the lasting image is one of messiah and not creative freedom.
Rating:
Summary: beware of the cult following
Review: It was the review above that put me off this book, but I read extracts from my university library and also consulted "joseph Beuys: the art of cooking" from the same author and found nothing of use, just a general rantings of the authors relationship to the artist. well, good for you - but how does this help me? or anyone else?
The author SEEMS to offer the same hero worship that Joseph Beuys was keen to escape from, given the dangers of idolising anyone, his critics certainly made a big deal of this (especially benjamin "quite mean" buchloh who compares Beuys to fascism and claims that a former luftwafe pilot cannot represent the art of post-war germany - but I say, look to your own problems in dealing with your national identity in the climate of psychological post-war reconstruction and leave the do-gooders be) and the image tends to override everything else - the lasting image is one of messiah and not creative freedom.
Rating:
Summary: Beuys Groupie
Review: It would probably be hard to overestimate the impact the works of German artist Joseph Beuys have had on modern European art. This is true. It is also true that Beuys was, and still remains, a most fascinating figure, and a most inspiring one as well. Thought provoking, liberating, and magical. However, Beuys was no great philosopher. Actually, to be quite honest, he was equipped with a brain like a Swiss cheese, full of holes, and whenever he was asked to talk about art - or politics, or ecology, or whatever - most of what he had to say made no sense whatsoever. For those of us who are FOR BEUYS - compared to those who are against him - READING Beuys can be very depressing, being constantly confronted with nonsense, mixed with lack of knowledge and pure mumbo-jumbo, and not even the slightest bit sophisticated, or ironic. Durini's book contains transcripts of a discussion with Beuys, entitled "We are the revolution", and more. Generally speaking, Durini's book is perhaps the most embarrassing one I've ever read. She, a (self-proclaimed?) "cultural professional, journalist, writer and patron" of the arts knew Beuys personally, and he - she says - changed her life. I bet he did. She was a Beuys groupie, and now that he's dead she's devoted her life to repeating over and over again just how splendid he was, and in all ways imaginable, strongly emphasizing - constantly - how fascinated HE was with HER, how SHE inspired HIM, and how THEY collaborated, and so on. Despite the book's subtitle, "A Life Told", it's not about the life of Joseph Beuys, and neither is it about art. Instead, Durini - it would seem - has taken every word Beuys ever ushered for granted, all of the nonsense and the mumbo-jumbo, and boiled it into a Swiss cheese soup, adding more than a few dashes of egomania. If it wasn't so absolutely pathetic, perhaps it could have been funny. But it isn't. As far as I am concerned, the MOST embarrassing part of the book is an "interview" conducted by a certain MBM, "interviewing" Durini. If she - Durini - didn't write ALL of this herself (and while I was reading I kept suspecting that she had ... Which (sane) interviewer would go, like MBM does, "In Beuys I see the totality of reason set within the context of life, and therefore in the real and the spiritual"? And what the heck does it mean?) ... Where was I? If she didn't make this up herself, MBM ought to be ashamed of himself. Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, I fear, would never even stop to consider. Go buy some other book.
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