What Is Art?

Joseph Beuys stated in a letter to Manfred Schradi (Oct. 21, 1971):

“I know that from him [Rudolf Steiner] that a mission was given to me to gradually remove people’s alienation and mistrust toward the supersensible through my means. In political thinking—the field I have to be working on daily—it is a matter of realizing the Threefold Social Order as quickly as possible.”

Joseph Beuys’s work continues to influence and inspire artists and thinkers around the world—in areas from organizational learning, direct democracy, and new forms of money, to new methods of art education and the practice of “ecological art.”

Volker Harlan (a close colleague of Beuys), whose own work also explores substance and sacrament, talked in a conversation with Joseph Beuys about the deeper motivations and insights behind “social sculpture” and his expanded view of art. These profound reflections are complemented by Harlan’s thoughtful essays and give a sense of the interconnected nature of all life forms, offering a basis for a path toward a future that is ecologically sustainable.

The book features more than forty illustrations.