Joseph Beuys — Four Books in a Box

A slipcase of four clothbound books, each built around one Joseph Beuys project that Klaus Staeck and Gerhard Steidl witnessed and recorded at first hand.

The political graphic artist Staeck began working with Beuys in 1968, publishing his posters, postcards, multiples and screen-prints, and from 1972 Steidl printed and produced those editions. Over an eighteen-year collaboration the two also installed Beuys's exhibitions and photographed and filmed his lectures, actions and workshops, many of them about social sculpture, his belief that anyone can be an artist.

The volumes cover Beuys's first trip to the United States, made with Staeck and Steidl in January 1974 (Beuys in America); the Honeypump in the Workplace, which drove honey through tubes across the Fridericianum during documenta 6 in 1977 (Honey is flowing in all directions); the Periphery Workshop held at the same documenta; and the 1980 installation in Ghent's Museum of Fine Arts that placed shelves of everyday East German products, each signed by Beuys, among Flemish Old Master paintings (Das Wirtschaftswertprinzip). The pictures show Beuys playing to his audience as well as in quieter, private moments.

Steidl, 2022. 600 pages in four volumes, 405 images, clothbound in a slipcase, 21 x 29.7 cm. In English and German. Edition of 900 slipcases, each with a photograph signed and numbered by Gerhard Steidl.