Great Works: Tram Stop, 1976, Joseph Beuys

The narrative of the art of Joseph Beuys, and the multiple keys to its meaning, are utterly at one with the story of his life. This is why no Beuys show is ever quite complete without multiple lugubrious photographs of the man himself, in homburg, braces and long coat, purposefully striding; or of Beuys standing at a blackboard, among a crowd of adoring acolytes, explaining the mysteries of it all with a flurry of quasi-mathematical formulae.