From Library Journal
Beuys is arguably the most important postwar European artist, yet he is not well known in America outside art circles. Even though he was incredibly prolific, this ignorance is understandable. More than most artists' works, Beuys's sketches and sculpture, performances and predigts "sermons" can only be interpreted through his highly personal semiotics and his "expanded concept of art," expressed simultaneously in his art. To facilitate our interpretation, Stachelhaus tries to blend biography with an analysis of the development of the artist's revolutionary social theory of art. Unfortunately, both suffer from a lack of continuity as characters and concepts alike are introduced and then dropped. As the only full-length English-language biography available, this book is recommended as a supplement to collections already containing catalogs of Beuys ' s work or to complement the artist's less encompassing but much more captivating direct addresses to his American audience collected in Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America; Writings by and Interviews with the Artist (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990). --Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kurzbeschreibung
Biography of Joseph Beuys, examining his view that art is life and life is art and telling the story of his political campaign. The author suggests that his revolutionary performances and installations changed our perception of art in the last half of the 20th century.