At the Düsseldorf Academy of Art Beuys did not impose his artistic style or techniques on his students; in fact, he kept much of his work and exhibitions hidden from the classroom because he wanted his students to explore their own interests, ideas, and talents.
Beuys’ actions were somewhat contradictory: while he was extremely strict about certain aspects of classroom management and instruction, such as punctuality and the need for students to take draughtsmanship classes, he encouraged his students to freely set their own artistic goals without having to prescribe to set curricula.
Another aspect of Beuys’ pedagogy included open “ring discussions,” where Beuys and his students discussed political and philosophical issues of the day, including the role of art, democracy, and the university in society.
Some of Beuys’ ideas espoused in class discussion and in his art-making included free art education for all, the discovery of creativity in everyday life, and the belief that everyone was an artist.
Beuys himself encouraged peripheral activity and all manner of expression to emerge during the course of these discussions.
While some of Beuys’ students enjoyed the open discourse of the Ringgesprache, others, including Palermo and Immendorf, disapproved of the classroom disorder, anarchic characteristics, eventually rejecting his methods and philosophies altogether.
Beuys also advocated taking art outside of the boundaries of the (art) system and to open it up to multiple possibilities bringing creativity into all areas of life.
His nontraditional and anti-establishment pedagogical practice and philosophy made him the focus of much controversy and in order to battle the policy of “restricted entry” under which only a few select students were allowed to attend art classes, he deliberately allowed students to over-enroll in his courses (Anastasia Shartin,), true to his belief those who have something to teach and those who have something to learn should come together.
According to Cornelia Lauf (1992), “in order to implement his idea, as well as a host of supporting notions encompassing cultural and political concepts, Beuys crafted a charismatic artistic persona that infused his work with mystical overtones and led him to be called "shaman" and "messianic" in the popular press.”
Beuys had adopted shamanism not only as his presentation mode of his art but also in his own life. Although the artist as a shaman has been a trend in modern art (Picasso, Gauguin), Beuys is unusual in that respect as he integrated “his art and his life into the shaman role.”
Beuys believed that humanity, with its turn on rationality, was trying to eliminate “emotions” and thus eliminate a major source of energy and creativity in every individual.
In his first lecture tour in America he was telling the audience that humanity was in an evolving state and that as “spiritual” beings we ought to draw on both our emotions and our thinking as they represent the total energy and creativity for every individual.
Beuys described how we must seek out and energize our spirituality and link it to our thinking powers so that “our vision of the world must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact."
In Beuys’s own words,
“So when I appear as a kind of shamanistic figure, or allude to it, I do it to stress my belief in other priorities and the need to come up with a completely different plan for working with substances.
For instance, in places like universities, where everyone speaks so rationally, it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear.”
Beuys, as he often explained in his interviews, saw and used his
performative art as shamanistic and psychoanalytic techniques to both educate and heal the general public.
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