Comparing and Contrasting Beuys and Barney through Nat Trottman and Nancy Spector

The readings I would like to discuss are Ritual Space/Sculptural Time by Nat Trottman and In potentia by Nancy Spector. These reading compare and contrast the work and methodology of Joseph Beuys and Mathew Barney. I enjoyed reading these two pieces together because the essay by Trottman is an overview that quickly and clearly distills the work of these two artists, while Spector’s essay dissects the work of each artist and describes in detail why the work can be understood through the work of the other artist.

Trottman’s main argument is that both Beuys and Barney use space and time to create their own realities. In order to understand the importance of the work of these artists, we must first understand Barney’s investment as a student of modern physics, “Beuys felt that time and space rested on a continuum that it was his duty to exploit”(145). Barney’s work continued Beuys’ investigations but complemented Beuys by reworking the relationship between action and object. Barney’s work uses performance and objects shown in video format, so we understand everything about the space, what we question is the temporal, or when it all happened. Bueys performances occur only once and his sculptural objects left behind are the residue of his actions transmitting meaning through space and time (148). What I found interesting is the material decisions that each artist made to create a convincing argument about the importance of their respective spatial and temporal arguments. For example, Beuys used fat in Fat Room, initially lining the room with fat, marking his ritualized space, and then performing an action, placing the fat under his knee and leaving a cast of the negative of his knee pit, creating sculptural objects that were made through action. Barney’s material decisions were ephemeral in the sense that they clearly referenced his actions, like in Field Dressing when he used petroleum jelly, inserted into his orifices, which support and exaggerate his actions but act less as independent sculptural objects.








Spector’s essay contains more descriptions of each project, how they compare and compliment each other on a much more obsessive scale. Spector also clearly identifies that both artist’s work is autobiographical yet the action is Beuys work occurs in the public performed and Barney’s occurs in the private preformed. Spector’s explanation of Beuys’s Fat Room and Mathew Barney’s Field Dressing, from material choice to metaphor are necessary in understanding each work. The material choice Beuys’s Fat Room, fat and felt, are personal symbols for the concept of renewal. Fat can be liquid or solid and is easily transformed between the two. Felt is composed of recycled animal fibers, and have commonly had a previous life. Spector explains that Beuys uses these materials to “expand from the idea of personal rebirth to that of worldwide political and social awakening”(16-17). Barney’s material choices in Field Dressing are particularly interesting because they reinforce his personal analysis of the functioning of the internal organs in the human body. He breaks this functioning down to three main components, “’Situation,’ contains unadulterated, raw drive. In this state, energy is unorganized and essentially useless but ripe with potential. ‘Condition,’…is a disciplinary structure that processes this crude and random energy…’Production,’ makes this force manifest to the world via anal and oral channels”(25). After defining these conditions, Barney’s video installation of Field Dressing shows Barney naked and harnessed in climbing equipment, raising and lowering himself from a tub of petroleum jelly. On another screen we see a close up of him filling his orifices with the jelly, in effect altering the production components of the body, in an attempt to create a “hermetically sealed, but potentially explosive vessel”(25). Spector’s assertion of each of the artist’s work is that Beuys is attempting to come to a resolution exploiting his personal metaphors while Barney is creating chaos after defining his theory of the production system.














I have to say, I am not particularly interested in the depth of this work. I find the material choices and relationship to the body interesting, because each of the artists have specific, personal reasons for utilizing these materials but the extent of which these critics accept the metaphors as effectively communicating their ideas is a stretch. I see this work for its shock value, and I find the reasons behind some of the actions far fetched and confusing. I accept and agree that this work is avant-garde and pushing the limits of conceptual art while also questioning itself. However, I find that it is hard to understand without a long explanation, which makes me question its effectiveness.

Performing Objects and Actors. Where does the power of life originate?

In John Bell’s essay “Death and Performing Objects,” Bell presents the dichotomy between the living actor and performance objects that are not living, but have a connection to the living world, either through their materiality or their animation through human interaction. Bell begins his conversation by proposing that we all “arise from inert material, exist for a brief moment, and then return to the larger body of dead matter from which we arose.” In essence, he argues that actors/performers have a connection to the objects that they perform in a cyclical sense because the materiality of the objects – whether it be leather, wood or bone – was at one time alive. Although these materials had a physical “life” to them at one point, I think his justification that the implicit power of these materials is stronger because they are more connected to the life is incomplete. For example, the native American Zuni tribe honors small objects the look like animals which are carved from stone, called fetishes. These fetishes reference the Zuni creation story in which predatory animals were struck by lighting and turned to stone, but the heart inside the stone is still very much alive which protects its owner from harm. I believe that the anthropomorphic power invested in objects such as the fetish of the Zunis is just as powerful as the leather or plant objects. Bell references the use of animal as well as human bones and remains as objects of power. The objects we might understand the most are relics in the church – a divine protection that connects the human world with the afterworld. I argue that although these materials have a physical connection to life, the power of the object itself is imaginary and its strength is in the belief of the viewer, regardless of its materiality.

The subject of the role of the actor and the role of the performing object is one of the main points of Bell’s essay as well as Kantor’s “The Theatre of Death” (1975). Bell references the arguments of Edward Gordon Craig and Heinrich von Kleist who both agree that the puppet or performing object is more valuable that the actor. Kleist and Craig both seem to agree that the human form is awkward and useless as a valuable art form. Bell instigates that although Kleist’s and Craig’s argument offer warning to the actor as secondary importance in performing object theatre, the actor is still necessary to successfully activate object theatre. “The elevation of the object from the status of prop to active agent provokes anxiety, because it appears that focus on the object will reduce focus on the human body. This anxiety is in fact justified, because forming object theatre de-centers the actor and places her or him in relationship not to another actor or to the audience, but to a representative of the lifeless world.” In contrast, Taseusz Kantor claims that the death of the actor must be present in performance in order to truly fill the puppet with life, “it is possible to express life in art only through the absence of life.”

I am surprised that throughout both of these essays and the variety of performances including puppets and props that represent death, the Mexican “day of the dead,” or “Día de los Muertos,” was not even brought up. This is a holiday that is celebrated each year by families welcoming and honoring their loved ones who have passed. There are parades with balloons, costumes, candy, toys and they all usually depict the skeleton to represent death. I feel like this discussion would have been helpful to include in Bell’s essay discussing ritual as it relates to death and performing objects.

William Kentridge

In Lynne Cooke’s essay, “Mundus, Inversus, Mundus Perversus” South African artist William Kentridge’s powerful imagery of the plight of his country is highlighted. Kentridge himself acknowledges the dangers and difficulty of addressing apartheid directly, “I am not saying that apartheid, or indeed, redemption, are not worthy of representation, description or exploration, I am saying that the scale and weight with which this rock presents itself is inimical to the task”(41). Kentridge’s chosen form of illustration utilizes the polarized colors of black and white to overtly display the weight of his subject matter. Cooke argues that Kentridge’s Monument (1990), a play modeled after Samuel Beckett’s short play Catastophe, addresses his subject matter much more directly than Beckett’s with the use of fractured camera angles, sympathetic characters and understood through the medium of silent film as in the dramatic work of Russian Sergei Eisenstein. Cooke continues that the significance of this animated film is rooted in the violence that was occurring at this time in South Africa. The collapse of economic stability, threat of guerilla attacks and formation followed by collapse of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990 fueled a rather tumultuous period in South African history. I agree with Cooke that Kentridge’s Monument provides a platform for us to address the South African plight through the easily consumed animation.

Cooke also discusses Kentridge’s recurring interaction with theatre, from his early work with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1975) to Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997) a modern adaptation of writer Jane Taylor and the HandSpring Puppet Company. Ubu and the Truth Commission is an interpretation of the unbelievable accounts of human rights violence that occurred and were described in detail in order for individuals to gain amnesty from the newly formed Truth and Reconcilitation Commission by the ANC in 1996. During the formation of the cast, the company found it necessary to have the Ma and Pa Ubu, characters who were never present at trials, be acted by actual people – and the accounts of the actual people be represented by puppets, who were visibly mechanized by people. This was to amplify the absurdity of the situation. The use of puppets is two fold – to express the absurdity of the subject matter and to somehow make the consumption of these unbelievable acts of racial violence easier. However, Kentridge’s illustrations acted mostly as visual backdrop, where the roles of characters were acted out with the use of puppets onstage. Cooke argues that Jarry’s play abstracts the system of flaws in the authoritative figures from South Africa’s past who felt like what they were doing was right and argues that Kentridge’s vision completes this conversation.

Kentridge’s role in Jarry’s theatre production impacted his practice leading up to one of his most famous pieces, Stereoscope (1999). However, instead of the Soho Eckstein being an active antagonist in the piece, Kentridge allows this Soho to remain passive while the city around him literally deconstructs, even occasionally impaling Soho himself. I believe this shows Kentridge’s growth in understanding the power of apartheid in South Africa. The causes of which cannot necessarily be the responsibility of a notable few government figures, but on the masses – the people of South Africa. Now that responsibility of rebuilding the country after apartheid relies ultimately on the people of South Africa. The use of puppetry - whether in animation or theatre - exaggerates ideas by activating the body as well as the voice and I feel like it successfully reinforces Kentridges work.

Puppetry as discussed by John Bell and Stephen Kaplin

John Bell’s “Puppet’s, Masks, and Performing Objects at the End of the Century” is a wonderful resource collectively introducing the writers who have discussed “performing objects” (borrowing Frank Proschan’s term) from many countries throughout the world over the last century. Bell is happy to argue that the field of performing objects has remained all but “invisible” up until the last century because there has been little critically discussed about performing objects, although they have been an important part of theatre and performance since the Greek Drama. I am a new student to this field, so I feel like I cannot disagree and provide other examples of essays written about these objects that he has not mentioned. However, I feel like Bell is trying to add to the critical discussion about these objects as they occur in theatre, ritual and performance attempting to reveal the importance of these objects as cultural links through tradition. I agree with Bell that these objects are worthy of theoretical consideration here in the Americas as they have been considered in Europe. In “A Puppet Tree,” Stephen Kaplin remarks that “more books get published yearly on soap operas than on puppetry.” Kaplin’s discussion introduces us to many different forms of popular puppetry in the Americas. His exuberant voice examines popular puppetry and breaks down the puppet/performer relationship quantifiable by distance. By specifically defining these relationships, Kaplin is creating a system of comparing the objects and therefore, examining them critically. Whereas Bell states he wants the objects to critically examined and discussed further, Kaplin is installing a system for us to examine and discuss performing objects.

I feel like these two writings complement each other nicely because we have examples of writings that discuss performing objects and a text that nicely illustrates the objects and breaks them down, allowing us to create our own discussion about them.

On a side note, I’ve seen some of the performances that Kaplin mentions, and they are amazing! I was part of a Bread and Puppet Parade in Richmond, Virginia and I have also seen Julie Taymor’s The Lion King in London, and they were both spectacular. The Bread and Puppet Parade I saw was on Halloween in 2007 and I am including some images here (although some are hard to see because it was so dark).