Claudia Mesch
Claudia Mesch writes on developments in 20th-century and contemporary art. Her publications examine modern art's cultural exchanges across national, disciplinary, and other borders, as well as modern art's engagement with politics and with games and game structure. She is the author of many books including Joseph Beuys: The Reader; Modern Art at the Berlin Wall: Demarcating Culture in the Cold War Germanys [See Judith Smith, "East German art not to be dismissed, professor asserts,"ASU News, May 20, 2009]; Art and Politics: a Small History of Art for Social Change since 1945; and the artist biography Joseph Beuys. A Korean translation of The Beuys Reader and an Italian edition of Joseph Beuys are forthcoming, and a paperback reprint edition of Modern Art at the Berlin Wall was released in 2018. She is also part of the writing team for the textbook Art History: a Thematic Approach, Renaissance to the Present, with Samantha Kavky and Karen L. Carter (Cognella Inc., 2024).
Mesch is a founding editor of the open access e-journal Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, which has been in publication for over 15 years. A recipient of multiple research awards from the Fulbright and the D.A.A.D., conference awards from the Terra Foundation for American Art, and fellowships from the Getty Library and the Henry Moore Institute, Mesch was chosen to participate in ASU's 2008 "Last Lecture" series, a prestigious student-nominated award.
Education
PhD, The University of Chicago
BA, Yale University
Expertise Areas
Area of study
Research Interests
- Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Art History and Art Theory; Museum Studies
- Cold War Studies
- Trauma Studies
- Surrealism in the Americas
- German and French Intellectual History
Publications
- "Game-Based Learning in the Introductory Art History Course: Weaving Historical Contexts and Incentivizing Critical Looking," AMPS Proceedings Series 28:1, A Focus on Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning and Research in the Modern Academy, ed. Zain Adil (2023): 230-239
- Modern Art at the Berlin Wall: Demarcating Culture in the Cold War Germanys (I.B. Tauris, paperback edition/reprint, 2018)
- Joseph Beuys (Reaktion Books, London, 2017)
- Beyond the Horizon: Armand Morin & Ernesto Sartori, ed. Claudia de Forêt (Yuma AZ: Yuma Art Center, June, 2016)
- “L’Institutionalisation de la sculpture sociale: le Bureau pou la démocratie directe par referendum de Beuys,” in Mathieu Copeland, ed., l’exposition d’un film, trans. Chloé Pelletrin (Dijon: Les Presses du reel, 2015), 176-179
- “Shadows of the Colonial: David Hare, Empathetic Perception, and Ethnographic Surrealism in the 1940s,” South Central Review Vol. 32 No. 1 (Spring 2015): 76-95
- Art and Politics: a Small History of Art for Social Change Since 1945 (I.B. Tauris, 2013)
- “Sculpture in Fog: Beuys’ Vitrines,” in John Welchman, ed., Sculpture and Vitrine (Ashgate and The Henry Moore Institute, 2013), 121-142
- “‘What Makes Indians Laugh’: Surrealism, Ritual and Return in Steven Yazzie and Joseph Beuys,” Journal of Surrealism and the Americas (2012) Vol. 6 No. 1 (December, 2012): 39-60.
- “Serious Play: Games and Early Twentieth-Century Modernism,” reprinted in David Getsy, Ed., From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art (Pennsylvania State Press, 2011), 60-72
- Review of Boris Groys, The Communist Postscript (Verso, 2010), Theory, Culture and Society Vol. 28, No. 3 (June, 2011): 162-164
- “Post-Meinhof Feminism: Yvonne Rainer’s Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1979),” in Berlin Divided City, Sabine Hake and Philip Broadbent, Eds. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 135-144
- Review of Heike Fuhlbrügge, Joseph Beuys und die anthropologische Landschaft (Reimer Verlag, 2008), Journal für Kunstgeschichte 12: 4 (2008): 307-311
- Modern Art at the Berlin Wall: Demarcating Culture in the Cold War Germanys (I.B. Tauris, 2008)
- “Socialist Primitivism and the ‘New’ Leipzig School,” The Art Book 14, No.1 (U.K.; February, 2007): 54-55
- Joseph Beuys: the Reader, co-edited with Viola Michely (MIT Press/I.B. Tauris, 2007)
- “‘Ezra Pound is back’: Klaus Ottmann’s SITE Santa Fe Biennial,” exhibition review, The Art Book 14, No.3 (U.K.; August, 2007): 65-66
- “Cold War Games and Postwar Art,” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, Vol. 6.1 (Winter, 2006), http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/contents.shtml
- “Serious Play: Games and Early Twentieth-Century Modernism”,The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945 (Fall 2005): 9-30
- Rethinking Conceptual Art,”* caa.reviews (Summer, 2002)
- " Racing Berlin: The Games of Run Lola Run," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture (2000).
- "Vostell's Ruins: Dé-collage and the Mnemotechnic Space of the Postwar City," Art History(2000).
Research Activity
- Mesch,Ulrike Claudia*. Surrealism and the Americas Conference. Terra Foundation(5/1/2010 - 1/31/2012).
- Mesch,Ulrike Claudia*. Surrealism and the American West Conference. (10/14/2006 - 10/31/2006).
- Mesch,Ulrike Claudia*. Surrealism and the American West Conference. Terra Foundation(6/1/2006 - 1/31/2009).