Ursula Reuter Christiansen on Joseph Beuys as Teacher

“Beuys was a teacher who turned everything upside down.” In this video, German-born artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen offers a unique insight into her experience of being a student of the leading and controversial artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the late 1960s.
“It was a very tough school.” Reuter Christiansen talks about how she was accepted into Beuys’ class as one of the first four female pupils. At the school, she studied with a peer group, including the likes of Jörg Immendorff, Imi Knoebel, and Sigmar Polke. She describes Beuys’ “feared and anticipated review process,” and how a few shots of schnapps and playing foosball with Immendorff were components in “getting back on the horse” after a harsh review session. Not all were equipped to handle the critique. To this, Reuter Christiansen adds, Beuys’ reply was simply: “I’m not their father.”
The legacy of Beuys, Reuter Christiansen notes, was not only his great slogans - such as “Everyone is an artist” - but how his unique way of working with his own experiences, material and existence also served as an inspiration for the flourishing women’s movement to do their own things: “It was a revolution. It wasn’t a cliché.” Beuys, she continues, wanted to change things. Though he sometimes came across as “a Messiah” with his disciples, Reuter Christiansen underlines the tremendous impact of his grand vision “to effect change from the bottom up.”
Ursula Reuter Christiansen (b.1943) is a German-born artist, based in Denmark since 1969 when she graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and married Danish artist and composer Henning Christiansen (1932-2008). Reuter Christiansen has exhibited widely. In 2001, she represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale with Henning Christiansen. She has participated in group exhibitions such as WACK! Art and the feminist revolution at MOCA in Los Angeles and MOMA PS1 in New York in 2007-08. Recent museum solo exhibitions were held at SMK National Gallery of Denmark and MdbK Leipzig. Reuter Christiansen has served as a professor at HFBK Hamburg and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. For more see: ursulareuterchristiansen.com/...
Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) is a German avant-garde sculptor and performance artist. Known for his original and often controversial themes, his practice of “social sculpture” attempted to make art more democratic by collapsing the boundaries between life and art. Beuys served as Professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1961 until 1972.
Ursula Reuter Christiansen was interviewed by Tine Colstrup at her studio in Denmark in July 2020.
Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Edited by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Produced by Tine Colstrup
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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[@thelouisianachannel]

*Watch our full-length interview with Ursula Reuter Christiansen here:* kzbin.info/www/bejne/p4KmfHt5rJqGirc

[@DK-jg5vk]

Was anyone else mesmerized by that beautiful painting in the background?

[@abstract9459]

yes !!

[@MDoodlee]

I was waiting for a close up!

[@finalmattasy]

I think if people spend time with people they end up thinking they're great, so long as they see a bright side and a bright side in the dark side. Pursuing "high ideals" can get messy pretty easy. All those counter ideals floating in the wind, they either get incorporated into the concept or stuff explodes.

[@Novacynthia]

Beuys is one of the Great Loves of my Life & has been a great influence on my Art: I found out about him & Joseph Campbell when I was at University falling madly in love with both mens ideals~ I said to my Professor who I was working on a Self-directed Project with ~I am always falling in love with dead men!

[@asqualidadessemhomem]

Beyus change the way I see Art. And life.

[@archadeinteriors]

a riveting fable concocted form her own non existent memoirs, but very entertaining... i find the anecdotal cliches of beuys as the quintessential sculpture teacher hacking apart his students work with an ax extremely difficult to believe, especially given his primary philosophies, -even as she herself espouses so articulately, -that every one is an artist and his other highly intuitive and sensitive social sensibilities. i have a feeling she came the year after Beuys had gone and she used this mythology to establish her own art career. (now a non art student might buy into her fabrications, but a student myself i found the university one of the warmest, inviting, and most flourishing environments i had ever experienced in my life, and yet even there their still seemed to be students who were unhappy with the faculty or the formats. ) Now i will admit she has some cool art from what i can tell (and have further google searched for) and she is a fantastic and entertaining speaker.