Front cover of “Joseph Beuys – Multiples: Catalogue Raisonné 1965–1980,” New York University Press, featuring bilingual design and minimalist typography.

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Interior page with critical text on Joseph Beuys’ multiples, including commentary aligned with Benjamin Buchloh’s analytical framework.

Spread documenting early Beuys multiples from the late 1960s with black-and-white reproductions and bilingual entries.

Catalogue pages detailing sculptural multiples and conceptual objects within Beuys’ theory of social sculpture.

Archival photographs of editioned works accompanied by analytical notes in German and English.

Interior page showing Beuys posters and printed multiples contextualized within postwar European avant-garde practices.

Spread from the chronological register of Beuys’ multiples, documenting works produced between 1978 and 1980.

Back cover of the 1984 edition of “Joseph Beuys – Multiples,” showing publication data and academic layout.

JOSEPH BEUYS MULTIPLES: CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF MULTIPLES AND PRINTS 1965–1980

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Published by: New York University Press, 1984
Softcover, 324 pages
15 × 20.5 cm
Language: German & English
Condition: Excellent. Minimal handling wear, clean interior, tight binding, no marks.

Joseph Beuys Multiples: Catalogue Raisonné 1965–1980 stands as one of the most revealing cartographies of Beuys’ artistic universe. More than a record of objects, it operates as an interpretive key to understanding how Beuys built an entire philosophical system through reproducible forms. His multiples are presented here not as secondary works, but as the structural backbone of his conceptual program nodes in a network of ideas about pedagogy, democracy, myth-making, and the transformation of society through art.

The catalogue traces fifteen years of Beuys' production in which he redefined the very notion of the editioned artwork. What emerges is a portrait of an artist for whom every printed sheet, ephemeral announcement, small sculpture, or distributed object functioned as an activist tool. These multiples served as vessels for his theory of Soziale Plastik the proposition that every individual has the capacity to shape the social body creatively. Through them, Beuys dissolved the boundary between art and life, insisting that thought, participation, and circulation were as essential as material form.

Embedded within the volume is the critical voice of Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, one of the most influential art historians of the late twentieth century. Buchloh known for his incisive critiques of avant-garde mythologies and for reshaping the academic understanding of postwar European art offers a rigorous interrogation of Beuys’ strategies. His analysis situates the multiples within broader debates about authorship, political symbolism, and the tension between radical artistic rhetoric and institutional assimilation. Buchloh’s text gives the catalogue its intellectual gravity, balancing Beuys’ expansive, mystical narrative with historical precision and theoretical scrutiny.

Together, the documentation and critical essays form an unparalleled account of how Beuys engineered a new paradigm for artistic action: distributed, participatory, and conceptually charged. This catalogue remains indispensable not only to understanding Beuys' practice, but also to grasping the cultural and political ambitions of late-modern European art. It is a landmark reference one that reveals how a seemingly modest set of objects articulates one of the most ambitious attempts to reconceive the relationship between art and society.