The celebrated and controversial German artist, Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), is as well known for his claim that “every human being is an artist” as for his sculptural oeuvre made of such unusual materials as fat and felt. He will here be inscribed in a complex historical narrative, going back to the German Romantics, that reveals what his awesome and disquieting artistic and political ambition has been.

Professor emeritus from the Université de Lille 3, Thierry de Duve is a historian and philosopher of art, and an occasional curator. He is Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Art, New York University, for the fall semester of 2013. His English publications include Pictorial Nominalism (1991), Kant after Duchamp (1996), Clement Greenberg Between the Lines (1996, 2010), Look—100 Years of Contemporary Art (2001), and Sewn In the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp (2012). He recently finished a book of essays on aesthetics, and was during academic year 2012-2013 William C. Seitz Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) in Washington, D.C.

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