This museum-style exhibition, from the holdings of eminent German collector Dr Rainer Speck, includes a great vitrine piece which will have Beuys fans prostrating themselves before its contents. It includes one of the great man’s Homberg hats and wooden staffs wrapped in the inevitable coverings of grey felt (above, “Hagenfrau”, 1952). There are two placards in which Beuys places himself within a German cultural trajectory that spans Dürer to Documenta. Normally this kind of exhibition is reserved for Gagosian’s august uptown Manhattan space, but in an interesting new liaison between the gallery’s various arms, this time Dr Speck’s pieces will travel across the Atlantic to uptown New York after their London unveiling in Heddon Street (10 September-15 November).
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Joseph Beuys: Gagosian Gallery'