Joseph Beuys and History
Published on 24. March 2026
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-691-27954-1 (ISBN)
Description
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. At the same time, his oeuvre's disquieting echoes of the Nazi past suggest that not everything could be reconciled in what Beuys called "social sculpture."
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's "metaphorology," and ecological thought. Precisely because Beuys went to the extremes of art, the book demonstrates, he belongs at the center of its history.
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. At the same time, his oeuvre's disquieting echoes of the Nazi past suggest that not everything could be reconciled in what Beuys called "social sculpture."
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's "metaphorology," and ecological thought. Precisely because Beuys went to the extremes of art, the book demonstrates, he belongs at the center of its history.
Reviews / Votes
"[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?"---Emily Watlington, Art in America "Daniel Spaulding's ambitious new monograph, Joseph Beuys and History, [is] a densely theoretical rereading of the artist through the lens of Marxist social art history. . . . One of Spaulding's great strengths is his ability to estrange Beuys, to de-naturalize the artist's own interpretive matrix and articulate the oddness of what the work asks us to accept or hold true."---Andrea Gyorody, The Brooklyn Rail "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."---Donald 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."---Linn Burchert, SehepunkteMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
13 color + 26 b/w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-27954-1 (9780691279541)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Daniel Spaulding
Joseph Beuys and History
E-Book
03/2026
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€35.99
Available for download
Person
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.