Brown Bag Lunch Talk: Beuys vs. the Goldsmiths: Symbolic Meltdown and the Kronschmelzaktion (1982)

This talk revisits Joseph Beuys’ Kronschmelzaktion of 1982, in which the artist publicly melted down a jewel-encrusted crown to produce a new “symbol of peace” in the form of a golden hare. Beuys framed the transformation of crown to Friedenshase in alchemical terms, but it drew less on the mystical and more on the ordinary but still symbolically rich process of metallic reuse, which has a long history in Germany, among many other contexts. Viewing Beuys’s action from the perspective of the goldsmiths who collectively refused to participate in it brings deeper context to the noted controversy surrounding the event and sheds new light on the potential of metallic transformation as symbolic action in the monument wars of the twenty-first century. 

Please note that this is an internal event that is open to UCL History of Art staff only. 

Image: "Joseph Beuys with the replica of the crown of Ivan the Terrible, made from 1.6 kilograms of gold and numerous precious stones. From this material a new symbol of peace will be cast, a 20 cm tall hare. Photo taken during documenta 7 (1982)." Photo: Horst Ossinger. Courtesy Alamy.