ART 236 : Modern Art History

Joseph Beuys--a German sculptor and performance artist--became one of the most influential figures in modern and contemporary art. His charismatic presence, extraordinary life, and unconventional artistic style (incorporating ritualized movement and sound, and materials such as fat, felt, earth, honey, blood, and even dead animals) gained him international notoriety during the 1960-80s.

Joseph Beuys was the most controversial internationally known German avant-garde artist of the postwar years. His works range from drawings and sculptures to “happenings” and conceptual art. This amply illustrated volume follows Beuys’ own catalog of his life and works, including his tumultuous career as an educator and political philosopher, elucidated by numerous quotes from conversations with the artist himself.

In an increasingly polarized world, with shifting and extreme politics, Social Forms illustrates artists at the forefront of political and social resistance. Highlighting different moments of crisis and how these are reflected and preserved through crucial artworks, it also asks how to make art in the age of Brexit, Trump, and the refugee and climate crises. In Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, renowned critic, curator, and writer Christian Viveros-Fauné has picked fifty representative artworks--from Francisco de Goya's The Disasters of War (1810-1820) to David Hammons's In the Hood (1993)--that give voice to some of modern art's strongest calls to political action