Celtic + ~~~~~, 1971
Linen box containing a Super 8 film, b/w, 25 with sound track b 10 photographs b/w 50 x 40 cm ea. c bottle with gelatin sealed with beeswax 16.5 x 8.5 cm Ø (6½ x 3¼ in dia.). Box: Stamped with brown paint, 41 x 52.5 x 10 cm. (The edition first came in a cardboard box; only the last part of the edition came in a linen box as shown here, but many of the earlier cardboard boxes were later exchanged against the linen one.) Edition: 100, signed and numbered on label in box.
Schellmann 37
With this edition, Joseph Beuys documents his performance Celtic + ~~~~~, presented on April 5, 1971, in a civil defense bunker in Basel. The work includes photographic and textual material from the action as well as a small bottle originally filled with gelatine used by Beuys during the performance – an organic material that has since liquefied over time.
Like many of Beuys’s action performances, Celtic + ~~~~~ combined elemental substances, symbolic gestures, and ritualized movement. The presence of the gelatine, shifting in form decades after the event, underscores Beuys’s interest in transformation, process, and the continued life of materials beyond the moment of performance.
Celtic + ~~~~~ is held in the collections of MoMA, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Broad, Los Angeles; Harvard Art Museums; and the Bavarian State Painting Collections, among others.
