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Description: Eisenkiste aus Vakuum--Masse stamped with signature, date and inscription 'JOSEPH BEUYS 1968 INHALT 100 KG FETT 100 LUFTPUMPEN' (on the top) Iron, fat and bicycle pumps Height: 22 in. (55.9 cm.) Width: 43 in. (109.2 cm.) Depth: 211/4 in. (54 cm.) Executed in 1968 PROVENANCE Helmut Rywelski, Galerie Art Intermedia, Cologne. Josef Wendker, Herten, acquired from the above, 1968. Acquired from the above by the present owner. LITERATURE U.M. Schneede, Joseph Beuys Die Aktionen, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1994, pp. 206-215, no. 16, (illustrated, pp. 211-215). EXHIBITION Cologne, Art intermedia, Joseph Beuys. Zeichnungen und Objekte, December 1968-January 1969. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Joseph Beuys, November 1979 -January 1980, Station 11, p. 115, pl. 172 (illustrated). Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum und Museumsverein, Kreuz + Zeichen. Religivse Grundlagen im Werk von Joseph Beuys, August-September 1985, p. 90, no. 25 (illustrated, pl. 103). Paris, Mus‚e national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Qu'est-ce que la sculpture moderne?, July-October 1986, p. 212, no. 241 (illustrated). Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Joseph Beuys. Skulpturen und Objekte, February-May 1988, p. 189, no. 54 (illustrated). D쳌sseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Joseph Beuys-Natur Materie Form, November 1991-February 1992, p. 247, no. 369 (illustrated, pl. 192.) NOTES Eisenkiste (Iron chest) from the action Vakum--Masse, 1968, was chosen by Beuys to be one of the stopping points Stations ) on the Guggenheim Museum ramp in his 1979 exhibition, and in the accompanying catalogue. This major work touches on some of the central practices in his art. The object had first been used in a performance Beuys did the same year, during which he filled the iron chest with fat and 100 bicycle pumps, then welded it shut. This combination of a living, ostensibly waste material with a metallic human invention is typical of the kind of juxtaposition he favored. Beuys would have imagined a chemical reaction between the two that would give birth to something very worthwhile, all this as a kind of alchemical model by which the world is improved. After the performance, Beuys used the Eisenkiste in a number of exhibitions, with it becoming a signature work in his sculptural oeuvre. Beuys's interests in creating Eisenkiste are multiple. Like Marcel Duchamp's With Hidden Noise, 1916, it has a mysterious quality that can only be unraveled with knowledge of his work; of course, unlike Duchamp, Beuys deliberately does allow for the mystery to be solved, publishing the history of the sculpture in the Guggenheim catalogue. (About Duchamp, Beuys famously stated that his "silence is overrated.") But Beuys has his own allusive mystery in that the shape of the chest is a half-cross, symbolic of a form yearning for completion. Beuys used this shape on numerous occasions, especially to suggest the imperfect condition of Germany and Europe, and the need for spiritual wholeness. Fig. 1 From Aktion "Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erkl„rt", Galerie Schmela, D쳌sseldorf, 1965 Fig. 2 Beuys in Aktion "Vacuum--Maase' Fig. 3 Marcel Duchamp, With Hidden Noise, 1916, Philadelphia Museum of Art SALESROOM NOTICE Please note the complete provenance: Helmut Rywelski, Galerie Art Intermedia, Cologne. Josef Wendker, Herten, acquired from the above, 1968. Acquired from the above by the present owner.