Activity

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolph Steiner, The Threefold Sun, 1921. From Lawrence Rinder, ed. Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf Steiner's Blackboard Drawings. (Berkeley: University of California, 1997.), 60.

Active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher interested in connections between science and art. His blackboard drawings, the products of lectures conducted in the early 20th century, were preserved and subsequently appreciated for their aesthetic and conceptual qualities. Steiner’s understanding of the artistic and pedagogical elements of his drawings was encapsulated in his own words, “You could see what I meant by every stroke.” (Rinder, 23) In appraising Steiner’s work, author Lawrence Rinder has focused on the formal characteristics of the drawings. His perspective is useful because it leads to greater understanding of the blackboard images as what Rinder terms as “by-products of the spoken word.” (Rinder, 22)

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys conducting a lecture, United States, 1974. From Beuys in America. ed. Klaus Staeck and Gerhard Steidl, (Heidelberg: Stedl Publishers, 1997.)

Joseph Beuys was at the forefront of developments in conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s, and is important to this narrative in his justification and specific use of blackboards. He used blackboards in lectures, as part of performances to illustrate notions about the nature of knowledge. Beuys acknowledged the blackboard as a fundamental feature in the lecture situation, and accepted the relationship that developed with the audience as a result of using the boards. For Beuys and other artists, blackboards were symbolic of knowledge and provided a venue for the physical realization of ideas.

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