Das Witschaftswert-PRINZIP.

Heidelberg.: Edition Staeck., 1981. Three boxes of colour postcards + a bag of dried peas; housed together in original cardboard box.. (19.5 x 27 x 6 cm).. Published in an edition of 25 (+ 5 a.p.) copies, numbered and signed by Beuys in pencil on the lid of the box. Beuys additionally signed and inscribed the bag of peas in black pen. The colour postcards illustrate the Wirtschaftswerte, a Beuys installation at the exhibition ‘Art in Europe After 1968’, held at the Museum van heedendagse Kunst, Ghent, 1980. The bag of peas were made in East Germany (GDR). “The economic system and the changes it required held a very special place in Beuys’ model for the future … his ideas about the relationships between economics and culture entered not a small number of his artistic works.” (Klaus Staeck - Wirtschaftswertprinzip). With the Wirtschaftswert works, almost all the original materials stemmed from the GDR, and some from the Federal Republic, the Soviet Union, and Poland. What first attracted Beuys about Eastern European products was their extremely simple packaging, which was even sometimes expressly designated as temporary or makeshift. [Ref. Schellmann - Joseph Beuys. The Multiples, no. 393].