The essential Joseph Beuys

Abstract

Joseph Beuys challenged traditional confines of art, embracing a broader, philosophically and politically-based practice formulated in the dictum everyone is an artist. His approach to the creative process transformed materials such as felt, fat, honey, blood, wax, copper, and sulfur into fluent and expressive artistic media. He prefered smells of the pungent and decaying, just as he favoured the indecent, ugly, and disfigured over the polished, shiney, and tasteful products of city slickers and social seekers. His long-term aims included the introduction of direct democracy through referendum, free access to all educational institutions, and restructuring of the economy based on ecological necessity. The book provides a survey of the artist's work in the mediums in which he worked - drawings and watercolours, sculptures and objects, environments and actions, and multiples and printed works. Arranged chronologically, the book reflects the changes in Beuys choice of register, from the soliloquy of his early days to the dialogue of his period as a teacher to the powerful language of his public lectures to international audiences.

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