GREEN VIOLIN (GRÜNE GEIGE)
JOSEPH BEUYS WITH HENNING CHRISTIANSEN, 1974
Green, all over. Body, neck, pegs, the little scroll at the end. Whoever did this was thorough. Get close. There's a rubber stamp on the front of the body, a circle around a little cross. Fluxus Zone West. That was the crowd. Sixties artists who figured a concert could be a prank, and a prank could be an argument. This violin comes out of one of those concerts. Germany, 1969. Joseph Beuys sits at a piano in a museum. Next to him, a Danish composer named Henning Christiansen, playing a violin he'd painted green himself. He said he wanted it to look impudent and merry. Basically, rude but in a good mood. The whole evening was called Or Should We Change It? A title that sounds like they hadn't finished arguing about it. And this isn't the violin from that night. Five years later, Beuys and Christiansen turned it into an edition. Twenty-four green violins. Every one stamped. Beuys liked copies. Had a name for them, multiples, and a whole theory to go with it. The original stays put. The copies go looking for you. His line: a multiple is like an antenna. Standing somewhere. Staying in touch. He also went around telling people everyone is an artist. Not everyone can play the violin. That wasn't the claim. He meant everybody gets a hand in shaping society. And he wasn't kidding. In 1980, he helped found Germany's Green Party. Not played at the launch. Founded it.