Beuys & Duchamp

Points of overlap and contention between two avant-garde visionaries.
In conversations and interviews, Joseph Beuys (1921–86) alluded to Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) more than to any other artist. And hardly anyone else seems to have challenged his work and his thought more than this artist from the previous generation.
Direct evidence of this complex tension is his oft-cited action The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated from 1964, through which Beuys attempted to shift focus onto the politi