Text-Number: 0125E
Available: 18/09/1996
Category: CultureNumber of characters: 3075
Author: Robin Stein
Title: A log-book on art (3)
How to explain paintings to a dead hare
Copyright: Robin Stein

Robin Stein

A log-book on art (3)

How to explain paintings to the dead hare

As we said: Even if you plan a passage to art, an expedition that perhaps transgresses the limits of so called Great Art or Academic Art, a log-book on art cannot renounce prominent support. Usually you start running out of money, because preparations of the journey are much more expensive as even an experienced supercargo would have estimated. Things happen to end the journey, before it was started. One sits around and has to keep cool. No wind, no word. You start telling stories to eachother to kill time. And in the evening you write your entry to the log-book, this silent comrade that just listens without loosing his patience.
We don't want to compare a log-book with a dead hare - even if this little comrade listens without loosing his patience too. But there are times of forced interruption. And then the log-book helps adventures of art to be continued. The log-book - only for short passages, evidently - becomes part of the journey too. And sometimes - the writers subject beeing on nightshift - you cannot distinguish between dreamt plan and planned dream, and the voyage continues before it really started.
It was 26th of November 1965 that Joseph Beuys commits a fundamental pedagogical act. It happened in the city of Düsseldorf at the Rhein, in Germany. And the place was the Gallery Schmela. Here Beuys showed how to explain paintings to the dead hare: 
Beuys, whose head is covered with honey and golden leaves, holds a dead hare in his arm and carries him, walking through the exhibition and talking with him, from painting to painting, makes him touch the paintings with his pawns. After ending his round Beuys sits down on a chair and starts explaining the paintings to the hare carefully, because, as Beuys says, "I don't like to explain them to people".
We tell our log-book on art about it, because we thought about an example that shows of which kind the risky encounters of our planned expedition could be. Nobody shall say he didn't know about possible situations and confrontations.
Perhaps it is necessary to mention, that people of foreign tribes or affairs are not mad, even if it seems so to the voyager. Remember: We are going to visit art in its own realm, so please behave! Everything is allowed: you can point with fingers at people; you can laugh at situations or happenings; you can lick and suck the honey from your fingers if you touched a living thought; you can ask the dead hare what Beuys explained to him; you can read a log-book on art as an artificial enterprise; but please, if you want to travel with us, please don't understand too quick.
We are still preparing our voyage, because - sorry - we do not want everybody as participant. People who are so skilled that they already know what the will find in the end for example. No chance, sorry. Soldiers? No, what for? (If they throw off their uniformity, perhaps ...) Politicians? Listen, it really depends on. If you want to help us to start our voyage soon, look around: We need a cook!