Paulo Reis /// The Last Tragic Figure of the 20th century.

I begin this text talking about desperation, mortal illness, the beloved daughter of melancholy, not because I admire it, but rather because desperation is indicative of a condition of the soul, when the body complains, expresses itself, frays the muscles of the face, contracts the chest muscles with trembling and terror. So, is desperation will or imperfection for men? Pure dialectics, for if man is spirit and this spirit manifests itself through matter in the body ("I"), it is in this duality that the art of Dostoyevsky or Joseph Beuys can be understood. Kierkegaard –one of Beuys' favorite authors– proclaims in his eagerness for immortality that man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, temporal and eternal, freedom and necessity, he is, in short, a synthesis. Now to the facts!

On the night of December 23, 1985, an unexpected snowstorm pounds the city of Naples. In the Palazzo Regale space at the Capodimonte Museum, Joseph Beuys patiently awaits his guests, surrounded by his wife Eva, his children Wenzel and Jessyka, gallery owner and friend Lucio Amélio and a few other guests who managed to make their way through the storm. The exhibition consists of an installation with a display window and golden copper plates on the wall.