The modern philosophy founded by Bacon and Descartes separated the human from nature. Since then nature has been regarded inferior to men and as an object to be dominated and exploited for the sake of human being. That anthropocentricism has destroyed nature, resulting the crisis of ecological system as well as of human existence. Facing these crisis appeared a new perspective called ‘deep ecology’, which sees the whole biosphere as a system consisted of numerous smaller, organically related with one another subsystems. Mankind is just one of these subsystems, not holding any supremacy over nature. Deep ecology considers human mind or society also as one of ecosystems. Therefore, to achieve the well-balanced healthy total ecosystem, not only environmental subsystems, but also human mind and society are important.
Joseph Beuys is a pioneer artist, who expressed the ecological crisis and tried to find a solution in his art, based on deep ecology. He got over the dichotomy of men and nature. Starting from the awareness and diagnosis of the total ecosystem, Beuys went to provide and practice the solution. He thought that the fundamental reason of the crisis lies in human mind and society and that to solve problems, social structure and the inner world of men has to be challenged. Beuys’s view has common ground with the deep ecological philosophy by Naes, Bateson and Guattari. Beuys’ early object art and actions revealed similar mechanism of nature, human mind and social system; and they called for the restoration of broken relationships between them.
Furthermore, he founded social movement organizations such as German Student Party and the Green Party, playing a leading role there. One of the main issues of these organizations was to create ideal ecological system through changing men’s inner world with creativity and freedom, and reforming the social and economical structures. In this way Beuys’ concept of extended art as a ‘social sculpture’ developed into a ‘ecological sculpture’. One of the most successful examples for that was <7000 oak trees> project, with which 7000 oak trees were planted throughout Kassel for five years(from 1982’s Dokumenta 7 to the next Dokumenta in 1987). For him planting of trees was an only symbolical action; to change people’s mind and economical system was much more significant. Therefore, he developed this project into the environmental movement, holding numerous campaigns.
In <ecological gesamtkunstwerk Hamburg>, one of his latest projects, Beuys tried to restore Altenwerder in Hamburg, the most terribly polluted site. He wished to extend the project into establishing a ecological movement and research organization as well as funding foundation. This project, even though not realized because of insufficient public understanding, brought out most clearly the core of his art on deep ecological thought.