Joseph Beuys's Eyes
Ben Roosevelt
American, born 1975
Details
Title
Joseph Beuys's Eyes
Artist/Maker
Ben Roosevelt (American, born 1975)
Date
2012
Medium
Pencil on paper
Dimensions
7 3/8 x 8 inches
Credit
Purchase with the Lambert Fund and gift of Laurence S. Leopold
Accession #
2012.158
On View
Currently not on view
These four drawings were first presented as part of an installation entitled The Blue Flame. Roosevelt recreated a bar, The Blue Flame, from a dream he had in which he was visited by historical figures whom the artist sees as important to his own artistic output—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dante, Iggy Pop, and Joseph Beuys. Playing with the dream-state in which the artist first encountered these figures, each is represented simply by a single feature in multiple. A riff on the Surrealist practice of the Exquisite Corpse, the individual features—Dante’s nose, Beuys’s eyes, Pop’s lips, and Coleridge’s hair—can be combined in innumerable combinations to create a complete portrait, perhaps of the artist himself.
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