Joseph Beuys (1921鈥�1986) was one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century鈥攁nd 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 鈥渆veryone is an artist鈥� 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鈥檚 work and career.
By putting Beuys in the context of Germany鈥檚 postwar recovery, Spaulding shows that the artist鈥檚 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. At the same time, his oeuvre鈥檚 disquieting echoes of the Nazi past suggest that not everything could be reconciled in what Beuys called 鈥渟ocial sculpture.鈥�
A definitive account of an often-misunderstood figure, Joseph Beuys and History proposes an ambitious rewriting of the dominant narrative of modern and contemporary art, drawing from Marxian value-form theory, Hans Blumenberg鈥檚 鈥渕etaphorology,鈥� and ecological thought. Precisely because Beuys went to the extremes of art, the book demonstrates, he belongs at the center of its history.
Daniel Spaulding is assistant professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a founding editor of the art history journal Selva.
"[Joseph Beuys's] utopianism clearly failed—at least if we take him at his word. But a convincing new book by the art historian Daniel Spaulding—Joseph Beuys and History, the first monographic study in English—suggests we shouldn’t, and instead proposes reading him as having acted in bad faith. . . . [T]he book [offers a] brilliant account of the dissonance between metaphor and material under capitalism. . . . [I]t forces readers who scoff at Beuys to look at themselves: What are you doing now, as fascism resurges and the climate collapses?"鈥擡mily Watlington, Art in America
"Spaulding is eminently skilled at rendering the complex accessible and the complicated straightforward. . . . His superb and informative book is both about Beuys’ location in art history, true enough, but its larger subject and theme is the location of human history, history as a whole, as it embeds itself in this profoundly moving artist’s psyche."鈥擠onald Brackett, Embodied Meanings
"[Joseph Beuys and History] holds great potential to engender readings of (contemporary) art that move beyond current tendencies of either celebration or critical 'debunking'. It avoids paranoid discussions around the 'toxicity' of (aesthetic) thought as such, in favor of historical contextualization. . . . Spaulding revisits and indeed refines traditions of social art history in a way that combines close observations of the formal aspects of art with a complex consideration of historical and intellectual contexts - without an attempt at reconciliation or closure of interpretations."鈥擫inn Burchert, Sehepunkte
“Joseph Beuys and History will become the standard work on the artist, transforming the study of Beuys—and much else besides. In this original account, Daniel Spaulding demonstrates that Beuys performs a kind of ‘sympathetic magic’ in his art, figuring political economy as an organism. It is a stunning argument, innovative and resonant, with ramifications that extend far beyond Beuys.”—Hal Foster, 快色直播 University
“Meticulously researched, historically astute, and theoretically advanced, Daniel Spaulding’s Joseph Beuys and History is the most serious study yet of the artist and his work. Unlocking the hermeticism and mythologies of his controversial but influential oeuvre in terms of its metaphors and materialities, this compelling book will become the new standard account of Beuys.”—Andr茅 Rottmann, European University Viadrina
