Joseph Beuys' work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organizational learning, direct democracy and money forms to art pedagogies and ecological art practices. This work describes Beuys' expanded conception of art and the deeper motivations and insights underlying 'social sculpture'.
An attempt to break through the mass of obscurantist writing about Joseph Beuys to introduce him in a simple and clear manner, through his individual drawings, used here as the basis for discussions of his life, art and ideas.
In November 1984, a remarkable discussion took place at the Meeting House in Ulm, Germany. It featured the radical artist Joseph Beuys, two professors (of Financial Sciences and Political Economics) and a banker. This title presents a transcript of this debate.
A distinguished group of critics, art historians and artists gathered at the Ringling Museum to take part in an international symposium on the legacy of Joseph Beuys. The papers presented here examine the artist's various productive modes by means of different critical tools and criteria. The result is a much needed reader that will help both students and art professionals come to terms with this controversial and eno
The early drawings and watercolors of Joseph Beuys are counted among the treasures of international public and private collections. They are works of the highest artistic sensitivity, their filigree aesthetics as impressive as their conceptual and emotional depth. For Beuys, working on paper had an existential character. Drawing and painting with watercolors was a form of exploring a spiritual world of images which provided him with the fundamental relationships and terms for his later work as a politically active artist. To illustrate the entire wealth of Beuys’ language of images, we have decided to combine two separately published volumes of watercolors (1989) and drawings (1992). Together they will provide a handy guide to Beuys’ complex œuvre for all future Beuys exhibitions.
Joseph Beuys created his "Block Beuys" installation in the 1960s out of greatly varied materials and salvaged items that were selected, manipulated, altered and brought together in unusual ways. The objects correspond to one another and, in their unmistakable forms, refer to the artist's work in its entirety. Block Beuys is installed in a series of seven interconnected rooms in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt. In Leve sieht Beuys , the photographer Manfred Leve has documented "Block Beuys," not only in the variety of its individual pieces, but also with a view of the entire work of art. His black-and-white photos, devoid of any kind of staging, allow a thorough and genuine look at this radiant work.
Die Aktion »Coyote« fand im Mai 1974 in der New Yorker Galerie René Block statt: In einem zum Käfig gewandelten Raum verbrachte Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) drei Tage und Nächte mit einem wilden Kojoten. Der wortlose Dialog, der sich in gestenreichem Spiel zwischen Mensch und Tier entwickelte, offenbarte gleichnishaft die verschütteten Möglichkeiten eines Dialogs von Mensch zu Mensch. Seit Beginn der 60er Jahre veranstaltete Joseph Beuys derartige an Rituale gemahnende szenische Performances, mit denen die vom Künstler immer wieder proklamierte und angestrebte Einheit von Kunst und Leben hergestellt werden sollte. Neben den Zeichnungen, Skulpturen und Objekten stellen diese Aktionen den geheimnisvollsten, am schwersten fassbaren Werkteil in Beuys’ Schaffen dar. Die Photographien und der im Beschreiben deutende Text von Caroline Tisdall lassen die zugrunde liegenden Beuys’schen Ideen und die vorgeführten Symbole nachvollziehbar und anschaulich werden.
Accompanying the most important UK exhibition of Joseph Beuys' (1921-86) work in over a decade, this comprehensive publication traces the development of the artist's practice from his early, rarely seen works to his conceptual environments. At the heart of this exhibition stands Stag Monuments, exhibited whole for the first time since its creation.
On Beuys' sculptural indictment of economic value A sumptuous room in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent in 1980: on its wall hang Flemish Old Master paintings, gleaming in their gilt frames; yet in the middle of the room stand industrial metal shelves, sparsely stocked with packets of everyday perishable products: salt, flour, olives and peas. Each packet is signed by Joseph Beuys and labeled with "1 economic value." This was Beuys' compelling installation Wirtschaftswerte (Economic Values), a declaration that culture had once and for all been reduced to economic property. The products selected were notably from the German Democratic Republic, heightening disparities between West and East, capitalism and socialism, high and low culture, the mundane and the luxurious. Das Wirtschaftswertprinzip / The Principle of Economic Value documents the original installation, which Beuys later recreated elsewhere and expanded in a series of multiples. Originally published in 1990, the book has now been redesigned by Klaus Staeck and Gerhard Steidl.
Kassel, documenta 1977. A pump driven by two strong motors forces two tons of honey over a 17-meter-high pipe into a network of tubes that traverses the rooms of the Fridericianum Museum. This was the core of Joseph Beuys' “Free International University” which he brought to life at documenta 6. Around his Honeypump in the Workplace Beuys created events that expanded his notion of art and starkly differentiated it from tradition. For Beuys, “workplace” meant talks, speeches, workgroup discussions and citizens' action committees. For 100 days he tirelessly expressed his ideas on how art and society must necessarily change, filling numerous blackboards with texts, diagrams and musical scores. On 28 June 1977 Beuys invited Klaus Staeck and Gerhard Steidl to join him in servicing and maintaining his honeypump, which was carefully documented in the photographs of this book, first published in 1997 and now re-conceived by Staeck and Steidl