Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Subject to passionate controversy during his lifetime, the work of Joseph Beuys is now considered one of the most significant and influential contributions to twentieth-century fine arts.



The Essential Joseph Beuys locates the artist's oeuvre as he saw it: part of a larger, philosophically based practice emphasizing direct democracy, free access to education, and the restructuring of society to meet ecological requirements. A total of 152 works from Beuys's many fields of activity--drawings and watercolors, prints and multiples, sculptures and objects, spaces and happenings--arranged in chronological order demonstrate the artist's formal versatility, creative richness, and conceptual depth. The peculiar poetry of the materials Beuys used--felt, grease, honey, wax, copper, and sulfur--emerges along with the gentle melancholy that suffuses the work. Alain Borer analyzes the world of Beuys's thoughts and imagination with special reference to the artist's written and spoken statements.



This survey is an essential introduction to the work and conceptual world of Joseph Beuys that will appeal to anyone interested in twentieth-century art.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

German artist Beuys (1921-86) produced a huge body of work across all media in pursuit of his idea of life as a total work of art, yet he lacks broad recognition in America. This is in part because many of his most intriguing installations and performances are either lost to posterity or impossible to relocate and in part because smaller individual pieces can seem hermetic outside the context of his philosophy and life. Happily, these two works as well as a touring exhibition of the multiples (Minneapolis, Omaha, Dublin, London, and San Jose through April 2000) may finally bring him wide renown. Borer's (art, École des Beaux-Arts, Tours) work presents itself as catalog to an imaginary exhibition that collects 152 of the artist's most important works in all media and from the four decades he was active. Large, exquisite reproductions, with minimal captions, take up most of the pages. Borer's introductory essay energetically lays the bio-philosophical context for the works. Schellmann's catalogue raisonné of Beuys's more than 600 multiples‘encompassing postcards, videos, prints, and sculptural works‘was initiated with the artist's involvement in 1971. After seven various German-language incarnations, it now contains new essays and other additions from curators at the American museums that are copublishing the first English-language edition. This is simply the definitive catalogue on one of Beuys's most important bodies of work, and it belongs in all academic and larger public art collections. Borer's book is the first choice for medium-sized art collections in need of an "essential" introduction.‘Eric Bryant, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Alain Bore r is a French poet and writer. He has been a professor at the L'École supérieure des beaux-arts de Tours since 1979, and a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, since 2005.