• Joseph Beuys
  Unterrichtstafel aus dem Büro für Direkte Demokratie
  (Blackboard from the Office for Direct Democracy), 1971
  Collection Adolf-Luther-Foundation, Krefeld, Germany
  

Joseph Beuys was one of the most revolutionary artists of the sixties and seventies. For Beuys, art and activism were inseparable. According to his radical notion of free democratic socialism and ecology, every person was potentially an artist able to transform society creatively. In 1970 he founded the Organisation for Direct Democracy by Referendum in Dusseldorf, Beuys became a charismatic leader. The transformation of society itself, and the set of relations between people to achieve that, was a new form of sculpture, a ‘social sculpture’. When he was invited to Documenta in Kassel in 1972, Beuys transferred the Organisation’s office to the museum gallery for the duration of the three-month exhibition. During these meetings/performances, Beuys would annotate his thoughts through diagrams on blackboards. Today, these blackboards are among Beuys’ most important works, as they illustrate formally and conceptually his revolutionary thought processes and the importance of dialogue and discussion as an artform. 

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