Broad Museum
221 South Grand Ave
Los Angeles
On view until April 6, 2025
by Cornelia Feye
February 21, 2025
Visiting the Beuys exhibition In Defense of Nature, on view at the Broad Museum in LA, was like rereading a beloved book from my youth forty years later. Can it still move me?
Beuys was an artist of his time and place: 1960s until 1980s in post-war Germany; the time I came of age as an art historian and a young woman in that particular society. I was lucky to hear Beuys lecture in my hometown of Stuttgart in the early 1980s. He was verbose, charismatic, and very idealistic. Afterward I asked him about his philosophy of nature. “Nature,” he said, “is under attack. We have to defend it. Without nature we are nothing.” This is the simplified version of his answer. He was, as previously mentioned, quite verbose. It follows logically that the current exhibition is entitled In Defense of Nature and includes a related project called the Social Forest where 100 oak trees are planted in Elysian Park in Los Angeles, with the cooperation of the indigenous Tovaangar people. The social forest as an interconnected community or trees and people refers to Beuys concept of a Social Sculpture. We can, so he argues, create a social sculpture simply through the way in which we interact with each other. Having a conversation, listening deeply to another person, or a group of people, creating understanding through curiosity and openness, is a social sculpture; maybe even more necessary than another sculpture made of wood or stone. This radical idea of inter-connection between each other, nature, or animals is at the core of Beuys’ teachings. His lectures are preserved in the form of several blackboards covered in notes, diagrams, images and urgent chalk marks.
The social forest is also in reference to Beuys’ 7000 Eichen (7000 oaks), a project he initiated at the documenta 7 in Kassel Germany in 1982. I was there and saw him standing on top a huge pile of granite posts, designated to be installed with each planted oak tree. The posts are rough-hewn and spray-painted with a golden hare, as can be seen on one such granite post present in the exhibition.
The hare, to Beuys, is an important example of a peaceful being without any aggression. In a performance piece he explains his art to a dead hare he’s holding in his arms. The 7000 oaks project continued for four years. People all over Germany planted oaks, adopted them, watered them, and watched them grow. “There is no aesthetic framework for the trees. They should be planted wherever aren’t any,” Beuys said. The final 7000th tree was planted by Beuys’ son Wenzel in Kassel at the documenta 8 in 1987, one year after his father’s death.
Beuys had undergone a near-death experience in March 1944, when the Stuka dive-bomber in which he was a rear gunner crashed in Crimea. Here begins an important origin myth for Joseph Beuys, the shaman/artist. According to Beuys, he was dug out of the snow at the crash site by nomadic Tartars living in Crimea. They wrapped him in fat and felt and transported him to their village on a sled, thus saving his life. He was later transported to a field hospital where he recovered from his serious injuries, including a skull fracture. Even though the story cannot be independently verified, from then on fat and felt, conservers of energy, became signature elements of Beuys art. He always wore a felt hat and at the Broad, three felt suits and a sled are part of an installation, and fat makes an appearance in many forms and containers—mostly melted by now.
As a self-proclaimed shaman, he wanted to be a bridge between the human and the animal sphere. In a famous performance piece at the René Block Gallery in Soho, New York, entitled I like America and America likes me, he locked himself in a room with a wild coyote for three whole days inn 1974. At the Broad exhibition, I saw the grainy black and white video of Beuys arriving at the gallery in an ambulance, directly from the airport, wrapped in felt. He entered the cage-like enclosure and first encountered the coyote. Over the next three days, they had to communicate with each other and learn how to get along, while visitors to the gallery were able to watch. For Beuys, the coyote was the spirit animal of America and he learned to understand, communicate, and like it, as the title states.
Joseph Beuys however had bigger ambitions than just to bridge the gaps between wild nature and humans, as well as between America and Europe. He wanted to transform society and save nature. As an active environmentalist he was one of the founders of the German Green Party in 1980.
A campaign post shows his trademark hare being threatened by a tin soldier with a tiny gun. The German Green Party ran on an environmental and pacifist agenda and was voted into the parliament in 1983. However, in his political activism, Beuys never committed to one ideology and art was always at the forefront of his actions. “Ohne die Rose tun wir’s nicht—without the rose, we won’t do it,” is the title of one print in the exhibition, accompanied by a fresh red rose in a glass jar. We need bread, but we need roses too.
Beuys also advocated for direct democracy, instead of governmental representation. To this effect, he staged a media friendly boxing match with one of his art students at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. The poor student had to represent governmental democracy. As the personification of direct democracy, Beuys hit his opponent hard, as can be seen in a hilarious, grainy video. The student, wearing a head-guard had a hard time defending himself against his much-older professor. I’m sure he hesitated to hit his bare-chested teacher back.
He needn’t have worried. But Beuys had radical ideas about art education. Since he advocated that “Everybody is an Artist”, whether they are teachers, cooks, street cleaners, plumbers and each action can be performed with creativity, it was only logical to abolish entrance exams and grades at the Art Academy. This did not go over well with the leadership at the Art School and they fired Beuys. A large photograph shows him exiting the Academy with two rows of uniformed police officers lining his path. Beuys is dressed in his trademark vest, cargo pants and felt hat, laughing all the way. What did the police officers expect him to do? He was a pacifist, who admired the humble hare. During his time as a professor from 1961-72 Beuys inspired an entire generation of German artists, such as Anselm Kiefer, Blinky Palermo, Jörg Immendorf and Gerhart Richter. The Academy later wanted him back, but by then he was already involved in international environmental project, political actions, performance art, the Fluxus movement, and exhibitions. The Guggenheim Museum mounted a retrospective of his work in 1979.
So, if visiting this exhibition was like rereading a book of my youth, did it stand up to the test of time? Now, in 2025, I see Beuys’ work with different (and older eyes). When I was young his idealistic ideas about society and art excited me. I took them very seriously. Now, I see the humor in them. To his credit Beuys didn’t take himself too seriously. An example is a Labor Day demonstration by young students waving red flags in the West Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln in 1972. Beuys stood by watching them march while leaning on a broom with red bristles. After the students had passed, Beuys swept up the mess they left behind on Karl-Marx-Platz. He collected flyers, pieces of paper and cigarette butts in bags and deposited them at the René Block Gallery as an art installation. This action was simultaneously hilarious, humble, and wise. Sweeping up quietly like a Zen monk, not taking sides, not judging, collection the trash, but also documenting the event. Even though the video is grainy and the location looks dated, this, for me it is a reason why I still regard Joseph Beuys as a major presence and artist, helping us to look at our society, then and now, with different eyes.
