During the 1970s, the German sculptor Joseph Beuys made a number of trips to Ireland and Scotland. This interdisciplinary study of the artist's work in the "Celtic world" assesses whether the practice shown or developed during these visits could be seen, in any sense, as a language practice - more specifically, as a "language of healing" - and whether Beuys could be said to have interpreted and performed notions of "Celticity" in these places. The book reflects on the anthropological aspect of Beuys' work and includes interview material with artists who worked with or met him during this time. (Series: European Studies in Culture and Policy - Vol. 10)

Published to accompany an exhibition at Tate Modern.

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era in the 1970s. Drawing on art works, media coverage, reviews, writings and the private papers of key Irish and international artists, critics and commentators including Samuel Beckett, Thomas MacGreevy, Clement Greenberg, James Johnson Sweeney, Herbert Read and Brian O'Doherty, the study explores the significant contribution of Irish modernist art to post-independence cultural debate and diverging notions of national Irish identity. Through an analysis of major controversies, the book examines how the reputations of major Irish artists was moulded by the prevailing demands of national identity, modernization and the dynamics of the international art world. Debate about the relevance of the work of leading international modernists such as the Irish-American sculptor, Andrew O'Connor, the French expressionist painter, Georges Rouault, the British sculptor Henry Moore and the Irish born, but ostensibly British, artist Francis Bacon to Irish cultural life is also analysed, as is the equally problematic positioning of Northern Irish artists.

To travel the road to Meikle Seggie is to undertake any journey which offers unexpected opportunities for intellectual growth and self-discovery. In the 1970s, Richard Demarco embarked on a series of journeys, starting in Edinburgh, to recover a sense of our living culture in the environments around us. These radiated out across Europe, underpinning the internationalism of this unique Scottish-Italian artist's own extraordinary journey. Forty years later, the journey is renewed with this reproduction of Demarco's original artwork and his first Meikle Seggie essay, along with a new translation into Italian and a new introduction.

What happens when nothing happens?

An integrative Heimatkunde – defined as the holistic study of localities and regions – has been a core interest in Ullrich (aka Ulli) Kockel’s research since he first graduated with a double primary in 1984. Frequently described as an interdisciplinary – and sometimes undisciplined – academic, his research draws liberally on art, geography, human ecology, philosophical anthropology, political economy, and social anthropology, with its primary focus located in the field of Empirical Cultural Science / European ethnology. The contributions to this collection celebrate Ulli’s explorations of place and belonging at different junctures on his quest for Heimatkunde. Laid out in four thematic sections – Borders, Regions and Frontiers; Human Ecology; Creative Ethnology; and, Memories – they feature creative work along with research essays. Given Ulli’s love of cooking and food, we describe our offering as a ‘feast-script’.

In 1984 Joseph Beuys assembled his monumental The End of the 20th Century in Haus der Kunst in Munich: 44 basalt blocks with conical sections drilled out of them, the resulting "stoppers" slotted back into place using a bed of felt and clay. He arranged the blocks to create an animated vibrant formation that charged the entire room with meaning. The relocation of the work to the new Munich Pinakothek der Moderne set an almost impossible challenge for conservators, not least owing to the fiery debate whether an aeuvre an artist had himself laid out could be touched in the first place. But in the end, they succeeded: a key late 20th-century artwork was given a new location and none of its suggestive powers had been forfeited in the process.