Joseph Beuys
… mit Braunkreuz

For the early limited edition by Joseph Beuys, two texts (letterpress print on paper) with pieces by the artist from 1961 are mounted full-format on the two inner sides of a linen cassette – the 2-second piece Gioconda III and Bühnenstück I. The open cassette frames the two texts. The cassette contains a halved cross made of gray felt and a signed hand drawing, whereby the unique drawings of the individual cassettes undermine the edition principle of a multiple. The crosses of brown oil paint painted on each of these originals and the halved felt crosses create a link between the individual numbers of the edition. Like the hand drawings, the felt element is provided with two crosses made of Braunkreuz, which are located on both sides next to the artist’s name stamped in brown paint. Since the late 1950s, Beuys has called an opaque brown color he uses “Braunkreuz” (brown cross), whereby the term is more than just technical in nature and its use signifies a connotation. This is also reflected as an integrative moment in the use of the term in the title of the edition, which encompasses the various components of the edition. These in turn stand for various forms of Beuys’ work – drawings and objects, performative actions and social processes. In a letter to Monsignore Maurer, Beuys describes the handling of the object: “What I mean is that you put the whole object together in some way and frame it in a deep frame or box. The important thing for me is that you put all the parts together at the same time.”¹
The edition … mit Braunkreuz is one of the artist’s early editions. In the same year, the edition Zwei Fräulein mit leuchtendem Brot was published as Beuys’ contribution to dé-collage 5, a numbered portfolio of happenings published by Wolf Vostell at Typos Verlag, Frankfurt, with happenings, pieces, scores and objects by Beuys, Block, Bremer, Christiansen, Dietrich, Gosewitz, Higgins, Hoeke, Kaprow, Patterson, Rahn, Ruehm, Tsakiridis, Vautier, Vostell and the ZAJ group in an edition of 500. Thirty copies of the edition, including the edition Zwei Fräulein mit leuchtendem Brot by Beuys, a text on paper and cardboard with a piece of chocolate painted over with oil paint (“Braunkreuz”), were published signed and numbered as a special edition for Galerie Block. These editions by Beuys were preceded by Richard Schaukal’s book Von Tod zu Tod und andere kleine Geschichten with original pencil drawings by Beuys, published in 1965 in an edition of 15.
The catalog BEUYS of the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach from 1967, published in a numbered edition of 330, resembles the structure of the edition ... mit Braunkreuz. The cassette catalog designed by Beuys for his first comprehensive museum exhibition contains texts and a stamped piece of felt. While in the edition … mit Braunkreuz the name is still stamped from individual letters, Beuys used a Braunkreuz stamp from the beginning of this edition, combining name and cross.
The hand drawings included in the edition … mit Braunkreuz date from 1948–1959 and were shown in the exhibition of the same name at Galerie Block in June 1966 before the cassette was completed. Like most of the editions by Beuys published by Edition Block, the cassette is unsigned and unnumbered. Instead of the drawing, one copy of the edition contains the stamped Gastuchtasche mit Braunkreuz, 1961, which is now considered lost.
Text: Birgit Eusterschulte

¹ Letter from Joseph Beuys to Monsignore Maurer (november 16, 1966, unpublished manuscript).