“Joseph Beuys and His Early Insights into the Rise of the ‘Manosphere'”
**The Enduring Relevance of Joseph Beuys: Art, Identity, and the Contemporary “Manosphere”**
The art world is often caught in debates about identity politics, with critics sometimes decrying the focus on race, gender, and personal identities as a modern phenomenon. Yet, artists have always interrogated identity through their work, often exploring its intersections with larger societal questions. Such inquiries were far from novel even decades ago, as demonstrated by the retrospective **”Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature”** at The Broad in Los Angeles. Featuring works by the German artist made primarily between the 1950s and 1970s, the exhibition highlights Beuys’s exploration of environmental activism and masculinity — a subject that gains renewed resonance in today’s socio-political climate.
This exhibition counters the narrative that identity politics and reflections on masculinity are trends of recent origin. Through sculpture, performance, and other mediums, Beuys dissected “manliness,” mocking archetypes associated with war, power, and dominance—traits magnified today by online “manosphere” culture. As figures like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate galvanize their follower base around patriarchal ideals of “alpha masculinity,” Beuys’s work reveals that these themes are not new, but rather lingering constructs with deeply rooted cultural and political implications.
### Masculinity Reimagined in “Schlitten” (Sled)
The first artwork featured in the exhibition, **“Schlitten” (Sled)** (1969), exemplifies Beuys’s approach. This replica of a World War II-era sled—complete with a felt blanket, flashlight, and utilitarian belts—references Beuys’s own military service during the war. The artist claimed his survival after a 1944 plane crash in Crimea was due to nomadic Tartars who wrapped him in fat and felt, materials that became recurring symbols in his practice. While the story is largely considered a self-mythologized fabrication, the sled resonates as a theatrical critique of militaristic masculinity.
Beuys’s embellished survival tale mirrors an ongoing trend: public figures, particularly male politicians, exaggerating their military service to project both strength and authority. For Beuys, however, this was part of a conceptual framework, a means of questioning archetypes rather than reinforcing them. His work reminds us of the ways in which myths of masculine resilience are not only historical but also central to contemporary debates on gender identity and power.
### Boxing for Ideology: Art Mimics Power Struggles
Beuys’s work often blurred the line between the performative and the political. In **“Beuys boxt für direkte demokratie”** (Beuys Boxes for Direct Democracy) (1972), the artist staged a boxing match at documenta 5 to symbolize a struggle between two versions of democracy: one represented by Beuys himself advocating for direct democracy, and the other represented by Abraham David Christian, a local art student standing in for parliamentary democracy. Beuys declared victory in the match, reinforcing his vision for a system rooted in active participation rather than bureaucratic representation.
Fast-forward to today, where performative masculinity has taken on an unsettlingly literal turn. Figures in the manosphere—such as Jake Paul, an influencer-turned-boxer—use physicality and spectacle to project dominance and perpetuate far-right ideologies. Paul’s boxing match with Mike Tyson, for instance, became not just a sport but a platform for projecting perceived “alpha male” values wrapped in conservative, and often misogynistic, rhetoric. While Beuys’s fight symbolized an intellectual critique, modern iterations of such performances often embody an earnest fixation on outdated gender hierarchies.
### Art as Currency: “Economic Value Objects” and NFTs
Another striking aspect of Beuys’s work is his critique of capitalist materialism, as seen in his **”Wirtschaftswertobjekte” (Economic Value Objects)** series from the 1970s. Beuys inscribed grocery items, such as cereal boxes and milk cartons, with the phrase “1 Wirtschaftswert” (1 Economic Value), challenging audiences to consider the intersection of artistic creativity and monetary systems. Beuys believed that creativity could one day replace traditional monetary value, positioning art as both a question and a solution to systemic inequality.
Today, this notion bears an uncanny resemblance to the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), digital “assets” that blend art and technology to create a new kind of currency. However, while Beuys envisioned an artistic utopia, the NFT community—frequented by crypto enthusiasts and manosphere influencers—often reinforces capitalist systems under the guise of innovation. Unlike Beuys’s critique, these digital assets are frequently used to entrench wealth and power among elites, underscoring their divergence from Beuys’s idealistic vision of restructuring systems of value.