Art Department Faculty Quadrennial Exhibition 2016 January 2016 | Page 14

While he counted debate, discussion, and teaching as part of his expanded
definition of art, Beuys also continued to make objects, installations, multiples,
and performances, many with a decidedly pedagogical mission.
his teaching, he continued to meet with students on the steps of the
Academy in the years following his dismissal.
Beuys filed a lawsuit against the Düsseldorf Academy, which he
ultimately won in 1978, and his dismissal was declared illegal.
Although his teaching contract was never reinstated, he was given
access to his old studio, and was once again allowed to use the title
of Professor. He immediately put his studio at the disposal of the
Free International University, the global organization he founded to
offer education to the very students he was once employed to teach.
While he counted debate, discussion, and teaching as part of his
expanded definition of art, Beuys also continued to make objects,
installations, multiples, and performances, many with a decidedly
pedagogical mission. Teaching was, for Beuys, a constant, embedded
in his creative practice.
Beuys’ practice and his heartfelt belief that art was and should be
universally accessible—that, indeed, everyone is an artist—brings
to mind the writings of John Dewey in his seminal publication, Art
as Experience, written in 1934. Dewey believed that every person is
capable of being an artist, living an artful life of social interaction
that benefits and thereby beautifies the world, and further that art is
a requirement of democratic citizenship.
XII Quadrennial 2016

Patricia Goldblatt notes that, for Dewey, “Processes of inquiry,
looking and finding meaning are transformative.” She goes on to
say that “A sudden transformative experience occurs when viewers
experience a ‘rupture’ from the mundane, are drawn to, or perceive
meaning. Investigation expands inquiry and revitalizes meaning…
The experience stands alone, but is then returned to the former
stream of daily life with new significance.”3 Dewey situated art as
experience, inseparable from a certain moral component. Artists who
practice within the academy cannot simply separate or isolate the
responsibilities of their position. It is simply impossible to dissociate
the making of art from intellectualism; even the most expressive
gestures are made in the context of synthesis, as exe \\