by Documentary footage of the first meeting between Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys at an exhibition opening in Düsseldorf in 1979 is perhaps more remarkable for its flashing cameras and flashing viewers than the exchanges between the artists themselves. Under the watchful eye of the press, the Beuys immediately do most of the talking. Warhol, beneath his trademark blonde wig, is as awkward and retiring as ever. Art writer David Galloway described the encounter as having “the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon”.
You can allow Galloway to make his myth. The two artists were epic opposites. As the gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac explains, Warhol, the elevator of consumerism, fame and surface glamour, “stood for America. He held up a mirror to the world, showing the excesses to society”. Beuys, the hard-working environmentalist, the spiritualist and one of the founders of the Green Party, was the voice of Germany, an old world rediscovered after fascism. “He thought art could change society,” says Ropac. It was a nail-biting clash of ideals.
But although they were never close friends, the result of the encounter was Warhol portraying Beuys again and again, in what is believed to be his final large series of portraits, a selection of which will be on display at the Ropac gallery in London. Although their projects were poles apart, it’s not that hard to see why Warhol might have taken a special interest in the German artist. “Beuys had incredible charisma and that power in his voice: when he entered a room he had a presence,” says Ropac, who speaks from experience. The art dealer met Beuys in 1982, working with him on his landmark 7000 Oaks project, which was planted across the city of Kassel, and introduced him to the German artist Warhol.
Beuys had created an artist-hero story for himself to rival any Hollywood fantasy, particularly his supposed rescue in 1944 from a fighter plane crash by Tartars who warmed his body with animal fat and felt (materials he used in his art too). He was a cultural icon with a carefully cultivated persona on a level with those in Warhol’s most famous screen prints, be it Marilyn Monroe, James Dean or Chairman Mao. At the same time, Beuys’ profound views were in line with Warhol’s more serious turn – now making his Last Supper and Rorschach paintings. In the Polaroid that Warhol chooses to use, Beuys is captured nearby, wearing the felt trilby and fishing gilet that were part of his artist’s uniform. This single photograph was used to create multiple portraits of Beuys in later years using the silk screen printing method that allowed Warhol to experiment with easily reproducible images.
Ropac points out that Beuys’ portraits are particularly prominent in Warhol’s output. During the 1970s, he took on more and more one-off commissions that risked “watering down” his achievements. “It was the images he chose that piqued his interest,” he says. “He wasn’t working on a series of elaborate portraits.”
The exhibition will show how Warhol took his subject with his usual act. Some are treated with diamond dust, others are painted by hand. There is a delicate drawing, and experimental prints in which Beuys appears in four contrasting images. But the intense attitude and understanding of the German artist is always the same. “When you see the same face in all these differences you realize there’s an incredible connection,” says Ropac. “He gave birth to the face, but also a state of mind.”
Making a face: Warhol’s portraits of Beuys
Joseph Beuys by Andy Warhol, 1980
When Warhol made his series of portraits of Beuys, he confirmed the German’s status as a living artistic icon, using a Polaroid taken at their first meeting that captures the German artist’s intellectual seriousness. At the time, Warhol’s star was wan. Today, however, it is a household name.
Joseph Beuys (Diamond Dust) by Andy Warhol, 1980
The industrial byproduct diamond dust was enjoying a pop culture moment when Warhol began using it in his artwork. It was being added to everything from wallpaper to Christmas cards. It was most famously used by Warhol in his 1980 Diamond Dust Shoes series, but Beuys was an unusual choice for this touch of luxury glitter.
Joseph Beuys with Andy Warhol, 1980-1983
The trial proofs of the exhibition show Warhol experimenting with multi-color possibilities, not only using reds and blues, browns and purples, but also reversing the light and dark tones of his image, like a photographic negative. At the time, he was using this reversal process to revisit and reinterpret his early paintings of icons such as Marilyn Monroe.
Joseph Beuys by Andy Warhol, 1980
Warhol’s sparse pencil drawings allowed him to focus on the essentials of his photographic source material.
Andy Warhol: Portraits of Joseph Beuys is at Thaddaeus Ropac, London, until February 15
