Joseph Beuys produced nearly 600 multiples during his lifetime, almost 400 of which are included in The Broad’s current exhibition, Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature, which opened on November 16. Consisting of found objects, sculptures, photographs, and other materials that relate to his political life, the collection is representative of Beuys himself.
“For him, all manner of things mattered,” said Andrea Gyorody, a Beuys scholar and one of the show’s organizers. “He put great effort into enshrining simple base materials with value, preserving their longevity as art objects.”
A Vision for Transforming Social Reality
Primarily, the multiples are concerned with the restoration of individual wellness and how the conditions of social reality might be transformed. “Capri-Batterie” (1985) features a yellow light bulb plugged into a lemon, which must be replaced as the fruit gradually rots. This is the kind of social participation that Beuys encouraged, an active regeneration of his own work.
“Beuys understood objects as holding a kind of stored meaning, an eternal potential that could be resurrected or recognized as a cue for action,” Gyorody said. “He hoped they could function as prompts or reminders of his political actions in a future when they were no longer talked about, and once referred to them as ‘memory props.’”
Never Stop Planting
Another of Beuys’ most famous works is the 1982 piece “7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks),” consisting of oak trees planted alongside basalt stone steles in Kassel, Germany. Of course, this piece could not be featured in The Broad’s exhibition, but the project has inspired a similar initiative called “Social Forest: Oaks of Tonvaangar,” named for the Tongva people whose homeland is located in Los Angeles County.
“Beuys said to never stop planting,” Sarah Loyer, curator and exhibition manager at The Broad, explained, “and we’ve taken our inspiration from that prompt because, unfortunately, his concerns about the environment are just as relevant today as they were four decades ago.”
Carrying a Tradition to LA
The Social Forest will be The Broad’s first permanent off-site project and will feature 100 Quercus agricola (coast live oaks) planted alongside sandstone boulders in the Chávez ridge of Elysian Park. An additional five trees will be planted in the sacred Tongva site of Kuruvungna Village Springs. To achieve this goal, The Broad partnered with community-based environmental justice nonprofit North East Trees, as well as Tongva (Gabrielino) archaeologist Desireé Reneé Martinez and artist Lazaro Arvizu Jr.
“Social Forest is about environmental activism and ecological repair, of course, but there’s also a social aspect: a collective reckoning and reconciliation that needs to happen here in L.A.,” Loyer said.
Purposeful and Poignant
North East Trees director Aaron Thomas stated that no part of the reforesting process was inherently symbolic, explaining, “We can calculate for every one of these oaks what the real and important environmental benefit will be, like how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses like methane and ozone will be sequestered or the volume of rainwater that will be absorbed through their roots, trunks, and canopies. The coast live oaks are native to Southern California, so they’re a byproduct of this soil, and the sandstone is native, and when the boulders erode, they’ll become a part of the soil that nourishes the tree.”
The Hope for Social Sculpture
This initiative is intended to continue Joseph Beuys’s idea of social sculpture and human and ecological initiatives, which he hoped would continue after his death in 1986. Through the action of creating spaces that may be consciously or passively learned from, Beuys envisioned that everyone would unlock their unique creative and intellectual potential.
“He really lived out his belief that everything we do is sacred,” Gyorody said, “that every action, every decision is shaping and reshaping the world around us. It’s like the butterfly effect where the flap of the wing changes the weather halfway around the world.”
