Celebrates the forty-year oeuvre of one of the most important and influential visual artists of the postwar era Subject to passionate controversy during his lifetime, the work of Joseph Beuys is now considered one of the most significant and influential contributions to twentieth-century fine arts. The Essential Joseph Beuys locates the artist’s oeuvre as he saw it: part of a larger, philosophically based practice emphasizing direct democracy, free access to education, and the restructuring of society to meet ecological requirements. A total of 152 works from Beuys’s many fields of activity—drawings and watercolors, prints and multiples, sculptures and objects, spaces and happenings—arranged in chronological order demonstrate the artist’s formal versatility, creative richness, and conceptual depth. The peculiar poetry of the materials Beuys used—felt, grease, honey, wax, copper, and sulfur—emerges along with the gentle melancholy that suffuses the work. Alain Borer analyzes the world of Beuys’s thoughts and imagination with special reference to the artist’s written and spoken statements. This survey is an essential introduction to the work and conceptual world of Joseph Beuys that will appeal to anyone interested in twentieth-century art.

Joseph Beuys is one of the most legendary figures of twentieth century art; his work and ideas continue to impact on artists today. An enigmatic, self-styled 'shaman' who embraced radically democratic artistic and political ideas, he has attained almost mythical status. This reader brings together the crucial texts on Beuys to look at the most contentious reception ever accorded a postwar artist.Here in one volume, are key essays by prominent artists and critics from North America and Europe, in a collection which foregrounds the full scope of Beuys' work across performance, drawing, painting, sculpture and multiples. With a foreword by Arthur C Danto, "Joseph Beuys: The Reader" features Benjamin Buchloh's seminal essay 'Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol' and texts by Rosalind Krauss, Peter Burger, Vera Frenkel, Irit Rogoff, Thierry de Duve and others, as well as essays translated for the first time into English. Also included are two discussions, previously unpublished outside of Germany, with Beuys himself, as well as a useful chronology of key events and exhibitions in the life of this most charismatic figure. The most significant collection of texts on this artist to date, the book will be essential reading for any student of Beuys and for all those interested in postwar art, the cult of the artist, and art's engagement with politics and society.

Joseph Beuys’s work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organizational learning, direct democracy and new money forms to new art pedagogies and ecological art practices. Here, in dialogue with Volker Harlan - a close colleague, whose own work also revolves around understandings of substance and sacrament that are central to Beuys - the deeper motivations and insights underlying ‘social sculpture’, Beuys’s expanded conception of art, are illuminated. His profound reflections, complemented with insightful essays by Volker Harlan, give a sense of the interconnectedness between all life forms, and the foundations of a path towards an ecologically sustainable future. This volume features over 40 b/w illustrations.

Joseph Beuys in America,Writings by and Interviews with the Artist,A deeply interesting collection of material by and,about this most important of contemporary artists.,Of immense interest to all admirers of Beuys and,anyone interested in modern art.

Published to accompany the 1994 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this book constitutes the most extensive survey of modern illustrated books to be offered in many years. Work by artists from Pierre Bonnard to Barbara Kruger and writers from Guillaume Apollinarie to Susan Sontag. An importnt reference for collectors and connoisseurs. Includes notable works by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

Points of overlap and contention between two avant-garde visionaries In conversations and interviews, Joseph Beuys (1921-86) alluded to Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) more than to any other artist. And hardly anyone else seems to have challenged his work and his thought more than this artist from the previous generation. Direct evidence of this complex tension is his oft-cited action The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overratedfrom 1964, through which Beuys attempted to shift focus onto the political and social dimensions of his concept of expanded art. The associations and connections between the artists go deep. Both used similar radical strategies to rejuvenate the concept of art and the role of art in everyday life; their questions had a number of aspects in common. This fully illustrated catalog is the first to undertake a profound exploration of this multilayered relationship, while investigating both artists' future-oriented potential.