#fettecke

and he's like, it's better than yours,

damn right, it's better than yours,

Ich bin KEIN Künstler

Überhaupt mache ich nur “Kunst”, um dem Staat ein gesichtswahrendes Alibi zu geben, mich ohne es so zu nennen heimlich zu entschädigen.

Daß Joseph Beuys mir persönlich im Beisein einiger grüner Parteigründer gesagt hat, ich sei ein Künstler, darauf ist geschissen! Natürlich bin ich Demagoge und kein Künstler.

Und ein gekreuzigtes Grundgesetz ist genauso wenig Kunst wie eine dreckige Badewanne…

Joseph Beuys has long been one of the most controversial modern artists of Germany.

In 2005, The Observer’s Sean O’Hagan called Beuys “fabulist and realist, romantic and activist, a man who made his life into one long, continuous and often seemingly contradictory art performance. Beuys was the last of art's great 20th-century myth-makers, an artist who, since his death in 1986, has attained mythic status.”

O’Hagan admitted that “we are still trying to work Joseph Beuys out today, even as his ideas have infiltrated contemporary art to the point where we no longer notice them.”

Three artists in Düsseldorf recently came up with an odd idea to "work out" Beuys. They took what was left of a Beuys Fettecke (“Fatty Corner”) - mostly really old butter - and distilled it into liquor!

When Andree Korpys, Dieter Schmal, and Markus Löffler were done, they tasted their potent concoction and at least Löffler detected a hint of parmesan. “But it’s really about the taste of art history,” he said.

They called their message in a bottle Joseph Beuys, Remains of a Fatty Corner destroyed by the Authorities because the 1982 Fettecke, a chunk of butter on display at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, had been “cleaned up” by a janitor to the horror of Beuys aficionados a mere nine months after the master’s death.

Artist Johannes Stüttgen rescued what he could from the garbage and subsequently claimed the leftovers as his own since Beuys had supposedly told him at the time: “Johannes, I’m finally making a fatty corner for you.”

Last month, Stüttgen allowed his colleagues to turn the Fettecke into “liquid documentation” but Beuys' widow Eva was not exactly thrilled with the homage and threatened a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

Apparently, she mostly didn’t like the title of the project which has now been changed to Spirit. Remains of the destroyed Fatty Corner by Joseph Beuys.

She also didn’t like that the name of her late husband appeared in bold print, known as “fettgedruckt” or “fat print” in German!

Good thing the warring parties came to an agreement or the fat would really have hit the fire!

Beuys hat einst live meinen “Fluchtpunkt” zum “Quellpunkt” weiterentwickelt. Darum habe ich jetzt dasselbe mit der Fettecke getan:

          PS: Nein, das ist KEIN Staub da auf der Teppichkante. Es ist Putz und geht nicht ab.