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Joseph Beuys
Claudia Mesch
€ 21.99
€ 17.19
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Description for Joseph Beuys
Paperback. A new critical biography of Joseph Beuys, arguably the most important and controversial German artist of the late twentieth century. Series: Critical Lives. Num Pages: 192 pages, 25 black and white illustrations. BIC Classification: 1DFG; 3JJ; ACXJ; AFKP; BGF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 200 x 130. .
Joseph Beuys is arguably the most important and most controversial German artist of the late twentieth century, not least because his persona is interwoven with Germany's fascist past. This book illuminates two defining threads in Beuys's life and art: the centrality of trauma, and his sustained investigation of the very notion of art itself. In addition to the materials of fat and felt that Beuys used widely in his oeuvre, numerous Beuys artworks are autobiogra-ph-ical in content. His self-woven legend of rescue and redemption still strikes many as a highly inappropriate fantasy, or even an outright lie, located as it is in the harrowing context of the Second World War as it was lived by a German soldier or 'Nazi'. Nevertheless, Beuys's self-mythology confronted the post-traumatic, foregrounding his struggle for psychic recovery. Perhaps most importantly, this led to his major efforts to expand Western art, freeing artists after him to work in a thoroughly interdisciplinary way and to embrace anthropological conclusions about art and culture. Beuys's lived experience determined a consistent commitment to peaceful change and positive transformation not only through his work, but in the discussions and institutions he initiated. His notion of activism-as-art has not only become a widespread practice, but is predominant in contemporary art of the twenty-first century. Exploring Beuys's expansive conception of art and following him into the realms of science, politics and spirituality, this book, in contrast to many other accounts of Beuys's life, attributes extraordinary importance to his own myth-making as a positive force in the post-war confrontation of Germany's past.
Product Details
Publisher
Reaktion Books
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2017
Series
Critical Lives
Condition
New
Number of Pages
192
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781780237350
SKU
V9781780237350
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-3
About Claudia Mesch
Claudia Mesch is Professor of Art History at Arizona State University. Her books include Modern Art at the Berlin Wall (2009) and Art and Politics: A Small History of Art for Social Change since 1945 (2013). She is a founding editor of the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas and lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Reviews for Joseph Beuys
..". presents an informative discourse of Beuysian work and 21st century art by addressing issues such as how the current practice of established codes of meaning and iconography fit Beuys' model. In doing so, this reader successfully meets its main aim, which was to reopen an 'international discussion on Joseph Beuys and his work.'" contemporary (U.K.)