Joseph Beuys

titled and numbered 5 on metal plaques on each reel.

box: 30 by 43 by 43 cm. 11 7/8 by 16 7/8 by 16 7/8 in.

each reel: 5 by 38 cm. 2 by 15 in.

Korff-Stiftung, Ilmmünster

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Amelio Editore, Germano Celant, Beuys Tracce in Italia, Napels 1978, illustrated (ed. no. unknown, p. 58) p. 207

Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Joseph Beuys, is it about a bicycle? Paris 1985, illustrated (ed. no unknown, p. 112) p. 141

Jörg Schellmann, Joseph Beuys, The Multiples, Munich 1992, p. 117, no. 80, illustrated

Kunsthaus Zurich, Joseph Beuys, Zurich 1993, no. 34, illustrated, (ed. no. unknown, p. 91) 

Musee national d'art modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, Joseph Beuys, Paris 1994, illustrated, (ed. no. unknown, p. 178) 

In Das Schweigen, five galvanised reels of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Silence (1962), Beuys creates a tangible record of his "action" on 11 November 1964 Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamps wird überbewertet (The silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated), in which he attacked Marcel Duchamp’s professedly ironical position toward art and his "early retirement" from the world of art. To Beuys, who believed that art could affect social change, this was a provocation. In his action Beuys voiced his disapproval, criticizing the silence observed by Duchamp after 1923, “because [Duchamp] stopped at a point when he could have developed a theory based on the work achieved; and the theory he could have developed I am developing today.” Through the editioned multiple, Beuys confers on the temporal, ephemeral performance a permanence and longevity.