Art
A few blocks east of the New Museum's skyward stack, a small gallery recently closed a provocative show focused on the final years of Joseph Beuys, the forefather of social sculpture. Though Beuys' legacy in the social practice(s) of art is as manifold as it is contested, few have assumed his mantle
Art
Mention Joseph Beuys’ name and the usual iconic gestures come to mind. But if you dig beneath the surface, even a little, you’ll discover how ultimately alien his art really is.
Art
"Socio-economic illumination, enabled by the evolutionary process of thought, was Beuys’ end-goal," writes Kara L. Rooney in her substantial catalogue essay for Joseph Beuys: Process 1971–1985, the small but ambitious show she's curated at the similarly disposed Rooster Gallery on Orchard Street.
Opinion
Joseph Beuys is a canonical postwar artist, but was he really as progressive and enlightened as we've come to believe, and as he led us to think? A new biography of the artist, written by German-born Swiss author Hans Peter Riegel, kicks up the age-old debate about the separation of the artist and t
Opinion
When I hear of German performance artist Joseph Beuys, I think of felt, fat and riding in an ambulance to live in a New York apartment with a coyote in "I Like America and America Likes Me." I certainly don't think of a hilarious attempt at New Wave pop.
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You may have heard that James Franco and Lady Gaga are performance artists, that their careers themselves are art objects built up over a lifetime. You may also believe that your Uncle Bob farting the alphabet is performance art. And maybe it is! Really, it's up to you, there's no quick and easy cha
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YouTube star and art-world explainer Hennesy Youngman records a rant about artists' personal mythologies, the tall tales that serve as the background for many art superstars. Besides a lesson in hagiography, this video serves up an awesome comparison of myth-making practices between rapper Jay-Z and
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One of protean German artist Joseph Beuys' most famous quotes runs, "Everyone is an artist." Framed within the artist's idea of "social sculpture," a conceptual practice in which our lived world forms a gigantic work of art and individuals become artists in its context, the quote makes sense. The wa