Joseph Beuys: Bathtub for a Heroine The Nerve Hotlist

By Susan Ferguson

The prolific German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) saw sculpture as a vehicle for individual and collective warmth and transformation - something very important in the Germany he came of age in. The first room of this beautiful and timely show hosts a wonderful selection of Andy Warhol portraits of Beuys in his ubiquitous trilby - in case you don’t remember what he looks like. The show itself is built around Bathtub (1961-87), on view in the UK for the first time. Cast from bronze, lead and copper, this monumental piece doesn’t exactly invite you to jump in. Alongside are some of its key precursors, related sculptures and intricate pencil drawings scribbled on the back of envelopes, hotel notepad pages and torn paper. They reveal Beuys’s workings. They show the strong women he saw as our saviours - the heroines of the exhibition’s title who ultimately drive this so-called collective transformation.

While at the gallery, be sure to go upstairs to see a concurrent show of Constantin Brancusi’s beautiful photographs of his own sculptures - he didn’t trust anyone else to photograph them - and also an incredible 2021 painting by Anselm Kiefer where the paint is so thick you question whether it has even dried yet.