Felt Suit

In the late 1950s, Joseph Beuys began constructing objects with non-traditional materials, including fat, honey, beeswax, and felt, believing that each possessed specific homeopathic and alchemical properties. Importantly, they all fluctuated with time and changing environmental conditions, enmeshing sculpture with the world around it. These materials also accrued biographical or literary meaning; both fat and felt, for example, figured in a partially fabricated story Beuys told of being rescued by nomadic Tatars after crashing his plane in Crimea during World War II. In the so-called “crash story” and in many of Beuys’s sculptures, felt serves insulating, protecting, and healing functions, making it the ideal material for a suit that could envelop the whole body. Modeled after one of Beuys’s own suits (with the sleeves and legs elongated), Felt Suit was produced in an edition of 100 and sold for a relatively modest sum. Beuys donned a version of the suit in a Fluxus performance with Terry Fox and again in a demonstration in Switzerland, but expressed utter indifference as to how it was displayed by his collectors, telling one of his publishers, “I don’t give a damn. You can nail the suit to the wall. You can also hang it on a hanger, ad libitum! But you can also wear it or throw it into a chest.”