Joseph Beuys and History

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.