Joseph Beuys' relationship with fat

In 1944, Beuys participated in world war two and was stationed in Crimea.  He claims that he was involved in a plane crash that left him alone in the wilderness, to be rescued by the nomadic Tatar tribesmen, who wrapped his broken body in fat and felt and nursed him back to health. Whether this story is true or is a self mythologised aspect of Beuys' persona, it speaks of the common theme in much of his work; the use of fat seems to speak of the essential elements of sustained life, of poverty, survival, abjection and nature.

Being a German alive for the duration of WW2 must have influenced his work, experiences of starvation,  shock, disgust and witnessing thousands of jews being crowded out of their homes present in each piece. 

In his performance piece "I Like America and America Likes Me", Beuys attempts to heal the broken relationship between the Coyote and man, revisiting his fabled experience of survival in Crimea by wrapping himself in fat and felt, having arrived in an ambulance, fully swaddled and delivered like a package to the Rene Block Gallery in Manhattan. 

The idea of an art persona, performed with conviction to the point of complete adoption by the artist, is interesting to me. Beuys didn't change who he was, he just created a story to support what was being evidenced in his work. Maybe he could identify with feelings of brokenness, fear, survival, and saviour, and needed a narrative that could explain these feelings in no uncertain terms.

Much of his life story is obscured or confused by myth, but to me, this enriches his art practice because by creating his own story he is reclaiming agency over his identity, which so thoroughly informs his art.

I'm impressed by how truly experimental Beuys was, oscillating from working with primitive materials that represent all culture, all human and animal life, to working with modern materials and creating sprawling post-apocalyptic scenes which somehow spoke the same language as the aforementioned work, although perhaps in a different tongue.

I also love his 1965 performance piece "How to explain pictures to a dead hare" in which, with a head covered in honey and gold leaf, Beuys roamed a locked gallery, explaining each painting to a dead hare he carried with him.