Of politics and painting: in the first installment of a two-part conversation, the artist looks back on his eventful early career—student days, learning from Beuys, Maoist and Green Party activism, clandestine visits to East Germany, the genesis of the Cafe Deutschland series

Art in America, June-July, 2005 by Robert Storr

RS: I was in France then.

JI: Oh, really? What was happening in Paris was fascinating to us, too. And then the school changed, step by step. Let me tell you about something. At that time the art school was being rebuilt, and they had to make a hole in the floor. And I thought, I must help the workers, so I took an old painting, and put it in the hole so that the cement and the small stones would be caught and wouldn't fall through to the different floors. Then I took a photograph of one of the workers; he stood proudly beside the hole, and the title of it was, "Other' possible functions of a painting." I did a photo session with him--of course he understood nothing, he thought this kid's completely insane, why should he give me this painting to protect the dirt? But for me this meant something. I saw the situation, I went into the studio, took a painting and brought it to the hole.

RS: Spontaneously?

JI: Spontaneously. It was not like sitting for days and nights, planning. In the following years, this became more and more an intuitive method for me.

RS: So you weren't thinking about Dada and Duchamp, and all that?

JI: No. Not at all, not at all. And I didn't think about the workers or Beuys all the time. It was more that I just had to do it. There were also a couple of performances. For example, at one of the annual exhibitions, I put a bed--I don't know why, exactly--close to the toilet. And in front of the toilet door I had put two paper figures. One was Polke as Hamlet, and I was Little Hamlet. They were painted on brown paper and then I cut them [out]. So I lay under them on the bed and slept. Maybe I had had too many drinks. Anyway, I slept. Beuys came in and woke me up and said, "Jorg. Great performance." But you know, I was just tired. Even if we laugh about it, it gave me new thoughts. He was able to reflect, he saw energy in these things, and at the right moment he put his finger on the point. Later I did a drawing titled, Jorg, come, let's go, and there was Beuys in a green hat, and I was a baby with a little brush. He gave me his hand like a big papa.

After a while, I went into the student government--the name was ASTA--and I was responsible for cultural affairs. Beuys came and said, "Jorg, please, you are the leader, help us, we need to invite Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, who played topless with a cello in New York." So I wrote a letter to Mayor Lindsay, and he wrote me back very formally.

RS: What was the letter about?

JI: The letter was about Charlotte and Nam June needing an invitation from another country to make clear here that they are international artists. I wrote him that these two artists are so important for the international art world, we've got to give them a chance to perform in Germany and other European countries. That was the start. Anyhow, Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik arrived and they went immediately into bed and we didn't see them for a couple of hours; only the sheet was moving, and nobody knew what was happening under the sheet. Beuys sat on the floor, and he had a huge, long paper with recipes for healthy food, and he just read the recipes aloud all night long. Charlotte and Nam June were part of the scene, and they appreciated it very much, and that was the first performance they did. Then they did another, in the art school; it was huge, with a lot of people, and then we did a closed event because the Germans were very prudish at that time--topless was not acceptable. It was on the front pages of the newspapers, etc. So all in all, that was the climate.