A groundbreaking study of one of the most important and influential artists of the postwar period

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century-and one of the most controversial. Working in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, he explored a radically expanded concept of art through a practice that ranged from performative actions to large-scale sculptural ensembles. While some contemporaries found his claim that "everyone is an artist" liberating, even revolutionary, others accused him of fostering a dangerous cult of personality. In Joseph Beuys and History, the first rigorous art historical study of the artist in English, Daniel Spaulding presents a striking new interpretation of Beuys's work and career.

By putting Beuys in the context of Germany's postwar recovery, Spaulding shows that the artist's superimposed biological, political, and economic metaphors offered a powerful way to think about the trajectory of human freedom, the place of art in capitalist modernity, and the possibility of an ecological aesthetics. At the same time, his oeuvre's disquieting echoes of the Nazi past suggest that not everything could be reconciled in what Beuys called "social sculpture."

A definitive account of an often-misunderstood figure, Joseph Beuys and History proposes an ambitious rewriting of the dominant narrative of modern and contemporary art, drawing from Marxian value-form theory, Hans Blumenberg's "metaphorology," and ecological thought. Precisely because Beuys went to the extremes of art, the book demonstrates, he belongs at the center of its history.

About the Author
Daniel Spaulding is assistant professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a founding editor of the art history journal Selva.

Reviews
"[Joseph Beuys's] utopianism clearly failed-at least if we take him at his word. But a convincing new book by the art historian Daniel Spaulding-Joseph Beuys and History, the first monographic study in English-suggests we shouldn't, and instead proposes reading him as having acted in bad faith. . . . [T]he book [offers a] brilliant account of the dissonance between metaphor and material under capitalism. . . . [I]t forces readers who scoff at Beuys to look at themselves: What are you doing now, as fascism resurges and the climate collapses?"---Emily Watlington, Art in America



Book Information
ISBN 9780691279541
Author Daniel Spaulding
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press