Publisher's Synopsis
On the basis of a 3-D postcard of the Twin Towers entitled Cosmos & Damian (1974) by Joseph Beuys, the author David Levi Strauss examines Beuys' prophetism and the means of his "art of healing." Twenty-seven years before the World Trade Center became the target of an international fundamentalist terror group, Beuys recognized the towers as a symbol of a cold "death zone" where capital rules. Beuys named those sibling wounds of society after two historical traveling healers, the Arab twins and Christian saints Cosmas and Damian, by inscribing their names over the towers. Tracing the origin of the Indo-European myth, Levi Strauss travels through art history and fills Beuys "therapeutic magic of images" with a new life. Author David Levi Strauss is Chair of the graduate program in Art Criticism & Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
