Editing Joseph Beuys (section)

==Body of work==
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Beuys-Piano.jpg|thumb|left|''Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano'' 1966, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris]] -->
Beuys's extensive body of work principally comprises four domains: works of art in a traditional sense (painting, drawing, sculpture and installations), performance, contributions to the theory of art and academic teaching, and social and political activities.

=== Artworks and performances ===
In 1962, Beuys befriended his Düsseldorf colleague [[Nam June Paik]], a member of the [[Fluxus]] movement. This began what was to be a brief formal involvement with Fluxus, a loose international group of artists who championed radical erosion of artistic boundaries, bringing aspects of creative practice outside of the institution and into the everyday. Although Beuys participated in a number of Fluxus events, it soon became clear that he viewed the implications of art's economic and institutional framework differently. Indeed, whereas Fluxus was directly inspired by the radical [[Dada]] activities emerging during the First World War, Beuys in a 1964 broadcast (from the Second German Television Studio) a different message: ''{{ill|Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet|de}}'' ('The silence of [[Marcel Duchamp]] is overrated'). Beuys's relationship with the legacy of Duchamp and the [[readymade]] is a central (if often unacknowledged) aspect of the controversy surrounding his practice.

On 12 January 1985, Beuys, together with [[Andy Warhol]] and [[Kaii Higashiyama]], became involved in the "Global-Art-Fusion" project. This was a [[fax art]] project, initiated by the conceptual artist Ueli Fuchser, in which faxes with drawings of all three artists  were sent within 32 minutes around the world – from Düsseldorf (Germany) via New York (USA) to Tokyo (Japan), and received at Vienna's [[Palais-Liechtenstein]] Museum of Modern Art. This fax event was a sign of peace during the [[Cold War]] in the 1980s.<ref>Chahil, Andre (13 October 2015) [http://andrechahil.com/wien-1985-phaenomen-fax-art-beuys-warhol-und-higashiyama-setzen-dem-kalten-krieg-ein-zeichen Wien 1985: Phänomen Fax-Art. Beuys, Warhol und Higashiyama setzen dem Kalten Krieg ein Zeichen]. Chahil Art Consulting (German)</ref>

===''How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare'' (performance, 1965)===
[[File:Joseph Beuys Filtz TV by Lothar Wolleh.jpg|thumb|right|Beuys Felt TV performance by [[Lothar Wolleh]]]]
{{Main|How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare}}
Beuys's first solo exhibition in a private gallery opened on 26 November 1965 with one of his most famous performances: ''[[How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare]]''. The artist could be viewed through the glass of the gallery's window. His face was covered in honey and gold leaf, and an iron slab was attached to his boot. In his arms he cradled a dead hare, into whose ear he uttered muffled noises as well as explanations of the drawings lining the walls. Such materials and actions had specific symbolic value for Beuys. For example, honey is the product of bees, and for Beuys (following Rudolf Steiner), bees represented an ideal society of warmth and brotherhood. Gold had its importance within alchemical enquiry, and iron, the metal of Mars, stood for a masculine principle of strength and connection to the earth. A photograph from the performance, in which Beuys sits with the hare, has been described "by some critics as a new [[Mona Lisa]] of the 20th century," though Beuys disagreed with the description.<ref name="Marina Abramovic">{{cite web|title=Marina Abramovic |last=Westcott |first=James |publisher=ARTINFO |date=9 November 2005 |url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/1537/marina-abramovic/ |access-date=22 April 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204082357/http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/1537/marina-abramovic/ |archive-date=4 December 2008 }}</ref>

Beuys explained his performance this way:
<blockquote>"In putting honey on my head I am clearly doing something that has to do with thinking. Human ability is not to produce honey, but to think, to produce ideas. In this way the deathlike character of thinking becomes lifelike again. For honey is undoubtedly a living substance. Human thinking can be lively too. But it can also be intellectualized to a deadly degree, and remain dead, and express its deadliness in, say, the political or pedagogic fields. Gold and honey indicate a transformation of the head, and therefore, naturally and logically, the brain and our understanding of thought, consciousness and all the other levels necessary to explain pictures to a hare: the warm stool insulated with felt ... and the iron sole with the magnet. I had to walk on this sole when I carried the hare round from picture to picture, so along with the strange limp came the clank of iron on the hard stone floor—that was all that broke the silence, since my explanations were mute .... This seems to have been the action that most captured people's imaginations. On one level this must be because everyone consciously or unconsciously recognizes the problem of explaining things, particularly where art and creative work are concerned, or anything that involves a certain mystery or question. The idea of explaining to an animal conveys a sense of the secrecy of the world and of existence that appeals to the imagination. Then, as I said, even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality.

The problem lies in the word 'understanding' and its many levels, which cannot be restricted to rational analysis. Imagination, inspiration, and longing all lead people to sense that these other levels also play a part in understanding. This must be the root of reactions to this action, and is why my technique has been to try and seek out the energy points in the human power field, rather than demanding specific knowledge or reactions on the part of the public. I try to bring to light the complexity of creative areas."<ref name="Marina Abramovic" />{{Failed verification|date=December 2022}}</blockquote>

Beuys produced many such spectacular, ritualistic performances, and he developed a compelling persona whereby he took on a liminal, shamanistic role, as if to enable passage between different physical and spiritual states. Further examples of such performances include: ''{{Interlanguage link|Eurasienstab|de}}'' (1967), ''Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony'' (1970), and ''[[I Like America and America Likes Me]]'' (1974).<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

===''The Chief – Fluxus Chant'' (performance, installation, 1963–1964)===
''The Chief'' was first performed in Copenhagen in 1963 and in Berlin in 1964.<ref name="td94">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.94</ref> Beuys positioned himself on the gallery floor wrapped entirely in a large felt blanket, and remained there for nine hours. Emerging from either end of the blanket were two dead hares. Around him was an installation of copper rod, felt, fat, hair, and fingernails. Inside the blanket Beuys held a microphone into which he breathed, coughed, groaned, grumbled, whispered and whistled at irregular intervals, with the results amplified by a PA system as viewers observed from the doorway.<ref name="td94" />

In her book on Beuys, Caroline Tisdall wrote that ''The Chief'' "is the first performance in which the rich vocabulary of the next fifteen years is already suggested,"<ref name="td94" /> and that its theme is "the exploration of levels of communication beyond human semantics, by appealing to atavistic and instinctual powers."<ref>[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.97</ref> Beuys stated that his presence in the room "was like that of a carrier wave, attempting to switch off my own species' range of semantics."<ref name="td95">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.95</ref> He also said: "For me ''The Chief'' was above all an important sound piece. The most recurring sound was deep in the throat and hoarse like the cry of the stag....This is a primary sound, reaching far back. ... The sounds I make are taken consciously from animals. I see it as a way of coming into contact with other forms of existence beyond the human one. It's a way of going beyond our restricted understanding to expand the scale of producers of energy among co-operators in other species, all of whom have different abilities[.]"<ref name="td95" /> Beuys also acknowledged the physical demands of the performance. "It takes a lot of discipline to avoid panicking in such a condition, floating empty and devoid of emotion and without specific feelings of claustrophobia or pain, for nine hours in the same position ... such an action ... changes me radically. In a way it's a death, a real action and not an interpretation."<ref name="td95" />

Writer Jan Verwoert noted that Beuys's "voice filled the room, while the source was nowhere to be found. The artist was the focus of attention, yet remained invisible, rolled up in a felt blanket throughout the duration of the event...visitors were...forced to stay in the neighboring room. They could see what was happening but remained barred from direct physical access to the event. The partial closing-off of the performance space from the audience space created distance, and at the same time increased the attraction of the artist's presence. He was present acoustically and physically as part of a piece of sculpture, but also absent, invisible, untouchable[.]"<ref name="e-flux">{{cite web |url=https://www.e-flux.com/journal/01/68485/the-boss-on-the-unresolved-question-of-authority-in-joseph-beuys-oeuvre-and-public-image |title=The Boss: On the Unresolved Question of Authority in Joseph Beuys's Oeuvre and Public Image |last=Verwoert |first=Jan |date=December 2008  |website=e-flux.com |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref> Verwoert suggests that ''The Chief'' "can be read as a parable of cultural work in a public medium. The authority of those who dare — or are so bold as — to speak publicly results from the fact that they isolate themselves from the gaze of the public, under the gaze of the public, in order to still address it in indirect speech, relayed through a medium. What is constituted in this ceremony is authority in the sense of authorship, in the sense of a public voice....Beuys stages the creation of such a public voice as an event that is as dramatic as it is absurd. He thus asserts the emergence of such a voice as an event. At the same time, however, he also undermines this assertion through the lamentably powerless form by which this voice is produced: in emitting half-smothered inarticulate sounds that would have remained inaudible without electronic amplification."<ref name="e-flux" /> Lana Shafer Meador wrote: "Inherent to ''The Chief'' were issues of communication and transformation .... For Beuys, his own muffled coughs, breaths, and grunts were his way of speaking for the hares, giving a voice to those who are misunderstood or do not possess their own....In the midst of this metaphysical communication and transmission, the audience was left out in the cold. Beuys deliberately distanced the viewers by physically positioning them in a separate gallery room — only able to hear, but not see what is occurring — and by performing the action for a grueling nine hours."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.frenchandmichigan.com/reading/joseph-beuys-and-martin-kippenberger |title=Joseph Beuys and Martin Kippenberger: Divergent Approaches to Relational Aesthetics |last=Meador |first=Lana Shafer |website=frenchandmichigan.com |date=8 November 2015 |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref>

===''Infiltration Homogen for Piano'' (performance, 1966)===
Beuys performed {{ill|Infiltration Homogen for Piano|de|Infiltration Homogen für Konzertflügel}} in Düsseldorf in 1966.<ref name="td168">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.168</ref> The result was a piano covered entirely in felt with two crosses made of red material affixed to its sides. Beuys wrote: "The sound of the piano is trapped inside the felt skin. In the normal sense a piano is an instrument used to produce sound. When not in use it is silent, but still has a sound potential. Here no sound is possible and the piano is condemned to silence."<ref name="td168" /> He also said, "The relationship to the human position is marked by the two red crosses signifying emergency: the danger that threatens if we stay silent and fail to make the next evolutionary step...Such an object is intended as a stimulus for discussion, and in no way is to be taken as an aesthetic product."<ref name="td168" /> During the performance he also used wax earplugs and drew and wrote on a blackboard.<ref name="td171">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.171</ref>

The piece is subtitled "The greatest composer here is the thalidomide child", and attempts to bring attention to the plight of children affected by the drug.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref name="td168" /> ([[Thalidomide]] was a sleep aid introduced in the 1950s in Germany. It was promoted to help relieve the symptoms of morning sickness and was prescribed in unlimited doses to pregnant women. However, it quickly became apparent that Thalidomide caused death and deformities in some children of mothers who had taken the drug. It was on the market for less than four years. In Germany around 2,500 children were affected.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>) During his performance, Beuys held a discussion about the tragedy surrounding Thalidomide children.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Beuys also prepared ''Infiltration Homogens for Cello'', a cello wrapped in grey felt with a red cross attached,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/exhibitions/beuys-unwrapping-the-enigma |title=Beuys: Unwrapping the Enigma |last=Naidoo |first=Alexia |date=18 January 2016 |website=National Gallery of Canada |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref> for musician [[Charlotte Moorman]], who performed it in conjunction with [[Nam June Paik]].<ref name="td171" /><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/30/charlotte-moorman-avant-garde-cello-chicago-a-feast-of-astonishments |title=Charlotte Moorman: Chicago exhibit reveres avant garde's renegade cellist |last=Workman |first=Michael  |date=30 March 2016 |website=The Guardian |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref>

Caroline Tisdall noted how, in this work, "sound and silence, exterior and interior, are ... brought together in objects and actions as representatives of the physical and spiritual worlds."<ref name="td168" /> Australian sculptor Ken Unsworth wrote that ''Infiltration'' "became a black hole: instead of sound escaping, sound was drawn into it ... It wasn't as if the piano was dead. I realised Beuys identified felt with saving and preserving life."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/in-a-house-without-love-piano-was-the-key-for-sculptor-ken-unsworth-20180726-p4ztqp.html |title=In a house without love, piano was the key for sculptor Ken Unsworth |last=Dow |first=Steve |date=10 September 2018 |website=The Sydney Morning Herald |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref> Artist Dan McLaughlin wrote of the "quiet absorptive silencing of an instrument capable of an infinity of expressions The power and potency of the instrument is dressed, swaddled even, in felt, legs and all, and creates a clumsy, pachyderm-like metaphor for a kind of silent entombment. But it is also a power incubated, protected and storing potential expressions ... pieces like ''Infiltration'' showcase the intuitive power Beuys had, understanding that some materials had invested in them human language and human gesture through use and proximity, through morphological sympathy."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.danmclaughlinartist.com/blog/2016/3/4/passant-marjm-7f7ds |title=Joseph Beuys, or Dissolution into Brand (Copy) |last=McLaughlin |first=Dan |date=30 April 2020 |website=danmclaughlinartist.com |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref>

===''I Like America and America Likes Me'' (performance, 1974)===
{{main|I Like America and America Likes Me}}
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Art historian {{ill|Uwe Schneede|de}} considers this performance pivotal for the reception of German [[avant-garde]] art in the United States since it paved the way for recognition of not only Beuys's own work but also that of contemporaries such as [[Georg Baselitz]], [[Anselm Kiefer|Kiefer]], [[Markus Lüpertz|Lüpertz]], and many others in the 1980s.<ref name="Schneede">Schneede, Uwe M. (1998) ''Joseph Beuys: Die Aktionen''. Gerd Hatje. p. 330. {{ISBN|3-7757-0450-7}}</ref> In May 1974, Beuys flew to New York and was taken by ambulance to the site of the performance, a room in the René Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://johanhedback.com/beuys.html|title=American Beuys|publisher=Johan Hedback|access-date=23 September 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140316063227/http://johanhedback.com/beuys.html|archive-date=16 March 2014}}</ref> Beuys lay on the ambulance stretcher swathed in felt. He shared this room with a [[coyote]] for eight hours over three days. At times he stood, wrapped in a thick, grey blanket of felt, leaning on a large shepherd's staff. At times he lay on the straw, at times he watched the coyote as the coyote watched him and cautiously circled the man or shredded the blanket to pieces, and at times he engaged in symbolic gestures, such as striking a large triangle or tossing his leather gloves to the animal; the performance continuously shifted between elements that were required by the realities of the situation and elements that had a purely symbolic character. At the end of the three days, Beuys hugged the coyote that had grown quite tolerant of him and was taken to the airport. Again he rode in a veiled ambulance, leaving America without having set foot on its ground. As Beuys later explained: 'I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.'<ref name="Schneede" />

In 2013, Dale Eisinger of [[Complex (magazine)|''Complex'']] ranked ''I Like America and America Likes Me'' the second greatest work of performance art ever, after ''Pandrogeny'' by [[Genesis P-Orridge]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Eisinger|first=Dale|date=9 April 2013|title=The 25 Best Performance Art Pieces of All Time|url=https://www.complex.com/style/2013/04/the-25-best-performance-art-pieces-of-all-time/|access-date=28 February 2021|website=Complex|language=en}}</ref>

===''Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony'', ''Celtic+'', ''Agnus Vitex Castus'' and ''Three Pots for The Poorhouse'' (performances 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973)===
[[Richard Demarco]] invited Beuys to Scotland in May 1970 and again in August to show and perform in the [[Edinburgh International Festival]] with [[Günther Uecker]], [[Blinky Palermo]] and other Düsseldorf artists plus [[Robert Filliou]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.eca.ac.uk/palermo/history_strategy_get_arts.htm |title=Strategy: Get Arts |access-date=10 December 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727223624/http://www.eca.ac.uk/palermo/history_strategy_get_arts.htm |archive-date=27 July 2011 }}</ref> where they took over the main spaces of the [[Edinburgh College of Art]]. The exhibition was a defining moment for British and European art, directly influencing several generations of artists and curators.

In Edinburgh in 1970, Beuys created ARENA for Demarco as a retrospective of his art up to that time, showed his installation ''{{ill|The Pack (Beuys)|de|The pack (das Rudel)|The Pack}}'' and performed ''Celtic Kinloch Rannoch'' with [[Henning Christiansen]] and {{ill|Johannes Stüttgen|de||fr}} in support, seen by several thousands. This was Beuys's first use of blackboards and the beginning of nine trips to Scotland to work with Richard Demarco, and six to Ireland and five to England, working mainly with art critic Caroline Tisdall and Troubled Image Group artist Robert McDowell and others in the detailed formulation of the [[Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research]] (FIU) presented at [[documenta 6]] in 1977, in London in 1978 and Edinburgh in 1980, as well as in many other iterations.

In Edinburgh, at the end of the 1970s the FIU became among four organisations that founded the [[German Green Party]]. Beuys became entranced by the periphery of Europe as a dynamic counter in cultural and economic terms to Europe's centralisation, and this included linking Europe's energies North-South to Italy and East-West in the Eurasia concept, with special emphasis on Celtic traditions in landscape, poetry, and myths that also define Eurasia. In his view anything that survives as art and ideas and beliefs, including the great religions for centuries or millennia, contain eternal truths and beauty. The truth of ideas and of 'thinking as form', the sculpture of energies across a wide and variegated spectrum from mythos and spirituality to materialism, Socialism and Capitalism, and of 'creativity = capital' encompassed for him the study of geology, botany, and animal life, finding meanings and precepts in all of these as much as in the study of society, philosophy and the human condition, and in his art practice as 'Social Sculpture'.

He adopted and developed a [[Gestalt psychology|Gestalt]] way to examine and work with both organic and inorganic substances and human social elements, following Leonardo, [[Ignatius of Loyola|Loyola]], [[Goethe]], Steiner, Joyce, and many other artists, scientists and thinkers, working with all visible and invisible aspects comprising a totality of cultural, moral and ethical significance as much as practical or scientific value. These trips inspired many works and performances. Beuys considered Edinburgh with its Enlightenment history as a laboratory of inspirational ideas. When visiting [[Loch Awe]] and [[Rannoch Moor]] on his May 1970 visit to Demarco he first conceived the necessity of the ''[[7,000 Oaks]]'' work. After making the Loch Awe sculpture, at Rannoch Moor he began what became the ''Celtic (Kinlock Rannoch) Scottish Symphony'' performance, developed further in Basel the next year as ''Celtic+''. The performance in Edinburgh included his first blackboard that later appeared in many performances when in discussion with the public. With it and his Eurasian staff he is a transmitter and, despite long periods of imperturbable stillness interspersed by Christiansen's 'sound sculptures', he also creates dialogue evoking artists' thoughts and in discussion with spectators. He collected gelatin representing crystalline stored energy of ideas that had been spread over the wall. In Basel the action including washing the feet of seven spectators. He immersed himself in water with reference to Christian traditions and baptism and symbolized revolutionary freedom from false preconceptions.

He then, as in Edinburgh, pushed a blackboard across the floor alternately writing or drawing on it for his audience.  He put each piece in a tray and as the tray became full he held it above his head and convulsed, causing the gelatin to fall on him and the floor. He followed this with a quiet pause. He stared into emptiness for over half an hour, fairly still in both performances. During this time, he had a lance in his hand and was standing by the blackboard where he had drawn a grail. He took a protective stance. After this he repeated each action in the opposite order, ending with the washing with water as a final cleansing.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> The performances were filled with Celtic symbolism with various interpretations or historic influences. This extended in 1972 with the performance ''Vitex Agnus Castus'' in Naples, of combining female and male elements and evoking much else, and extended further with ''I Like America and America Likes Me'' to have a performance dialogue with the original energy of America represented by the endangered yet highly intelligent coyote.

In 1974, in Edinburgh, Beuys worked with [[Buckminster Fuller]] in Demarco's 'Black & White Oil Conference', where Beuys talked of 'The Energy Plan of the Western Man' using blackboards in open discussion with audiences at Demarco's Forrest Hill Schoolhouse. In the 1974 [[Edinburgh Festival]], Beuys performed ''Three Pots for the Poorhouse'' again using gelatin in Edinburgh's ancient poorhouse, continuing the development begun with ''Celtic Kinloch Rannoch''. He met there [[Tadeusz Kantor]] directing ''Lovelies and Dowdies'' and was at [[Marina Abramović]]'s first ever performance. In 1976, Beuys performed ''In Defence of the Innocent'' at the [[Demarco Gallery]] where he stood for the imprisoned gangster and sculptor [[Jimmy Boyle (artist)|Jimmy Boyle]] in a manner associating Boyle with the coyote. In 1980 Edinburgh Festival Beuys was at the FIU exhibition and performed ''Jimmy Boyle Days'' (the name of the blackboards he used in public discussions), and where he went on a hunger strike as a public protest and led with others in a legal action against the Scottish Justice system. This was the first case under the new European Human Rights Act. The eight performances should be understood as one continuum.

=== The concept of "Social Sculpture" ===
[[File:7thousand oaks.jpg|thumb|upright|Some of the ''[[7,000 Oaks]]'' planted between 1982 and 1987 for [[documenta 7]] (1982)]]
During the 1960s Beuys formed his central theoretical concepts about arts' social, cultural and political function and potential.<ref>Oman, Hiltrud (1998). Die Kunst auf dem Weg zum Leben: Joseph Beuys. Heyne TB.</ref> Indebted to Romantic writers like [[Novalis]] and [[Schiller]], Beuys was motivated by a belief in the power of universal human creativity and was confident about the potential for art to bring about revolutionary change. These ideas were founded in the body of social ideas of [[Rudolf Steiner]], known as [[Social Threefolding]], of which he was a vigorous and original proponent. This translated into Beuys's devising the concept of [[social sculpture]], in which society as a whole was to be regarded as one great work of art (the Wagnerian [[Gesamtkunstwerk]]) to which each person can contribute creatively (perhaps Beuys's most famous phrase, borrowed from Novalis, is "Everyone is an artist"). In the video "Willoughby SHARP,'' Joseph Beuys, Public Dialogues'' (1974/120 min.)", a record of Beuys's first major public discussion in the U.S., Beuys elaborates three principles: Freedom, Democracy, and Socialism, saying that each of them depends on the other two in order to be meaningful. In 1973, Beuys wrote:

<blockquote>"Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build 'A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART' ... EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER."<ref>Beuys's statement dated 1973, first published in English in Caroline Tisdall (1974) ''Art into Society, Society into Art''. ICA, London, p. 48. Capitals in original.</ref></blockquote>

In 1982, he was invited to create a work for [[documenta 7]]. He delivered a large pile of basalt stones. From above one could see that the pile of stones was a large arrow pointing to a single oak tree that he had planted. He announced that the stones should not be moved unless an oak tree was planted in a stone's new location. [[7,000 Oaks|7,000 oak trees]] were then planted in Kassel, Germany.<ref>Reames, Richard (2005) ''Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet'', p. 42, {{ISBN|0-9647280-8-7}}.</ref> This project exemplified the idea that a social sculpture was defined as interdisciplinary and participatory. Beuys wanted to effect environmental and social change through this project. The [[Dia Art Foundation]] is perpetuating his project and has planted more trees and paired them with basalt stones, too.

Beuys said that:
<blockquote>My point with these seven thousand trees was that each would be a monument, consisting of a living part, the live tree, changing all the time, and a crystalline mass maintaining its shape, size, and weight. This stone can be transformed only by taking from it, when a piece splinters off, say, never by growing. By placing these two objects side by side, the proportionality of the monument's two parts will never be the same.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/51/1295 |title=Dia Art Foundation – Sites |publisher=[[Diaart.org]] |access-date=2013-03-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130518075016/http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/51/1295 |archive-date=18 May 2013 |df=dmy-all }}</ref></blockquote>

=== "Sonne Statt Reagan" ===
In 1982, Beuys recorded a music video for a song he had written entitled "Sonne statt Reagan"<ref>{{YouTube|DQ1_ALxGbGk}}</ref> which translates to "Sun, not Rain/Reagan", an anti-[[Reagan]] political piece that included some German puns and reinforced some key messages of Beuys's career (at least, after his days as a soldier) – namely, a liberal, pacifist political attitude, a desire to perpetuate open discourse about art and politics, a refusal to sanctify his own image and 'artistic reputation' by only doing the kinds of work other people expected he would do, and above all an openness to exploring different media forms to get across the messages he wanted to convey. His continued commitment to the demystification and dis-institutionalization of the 'art world' was never more clear than it is here.{{Original research inline|date=December 2022}}

Beuys made it clear that he regarded this song as a work of art, not the "pop" product it appears to be, which is apparent from the moment one views it. This becomes clearer when one reads the lyrics, which are aimed directly at Reagan, the military complex and whoever is trying to defrost the "Cold War" to make it "Hot." The song is perhaps best understood in the context of intense liberal and progressive frustration in 1982. Beuys warns Reagan ''et al.'' that the peace-loving masses are behind him, including Americans as well.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fluter.de/de/protest/musik/6244/|title=Pop statt Böller – Joseph Beuys: Sonne statt Reagan – Musik – fluter.de|access-date=23 September 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130211024105/http://www.fluter.de/de/protest/musik/6244/|archive-date=11 February 2013}}</ref> Some discourse about Beuys by those who consider his body of artwork sacrosanct has avoided "Sonne statt Reagan", regarding the video as an outlier, even to be ridiculed. Yet by choosing the vehicle of popular music, Beuys showed commitment to his views and to engage a broad means to have them reach people.

=== ''7,000 Oaks'' ===
{{Main|7,000 Oaks}}
Among Beuys's more ambitious pieces of social sculpture was the ''7,000 Oaks'' project, one of enormous scope which met with some controversy.

=== Political activities ===
Amongst other things, Beuys founded (or co-founded) the following political organisations: German Student Party (1967), Organization for Direct Democracy Through Referendum (1971), [[Free International University]] for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (1974), and German Green Party [[Alliance '90/The Greens|Die Grünen]] (1980). Beuys became a pacifist and a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons; he campaigned for environmental causes (in fact he was elected as a Green Party candidate for the European Parliament). Some of his art directly addressed the political issues of the day among groups with which he affiliated. His song and music video "Sun Instead of Reagan" (1982) expresses the theme of regeneration (optimism, growth, hope) running through his life and work as well as his interest in contemporary nuclear politics: "But we want: sun instead of Reagan, to live without weapons! Whether West, whether East, let missiles rust!"<ref>{{cite web|last=Beuys|title=Sun Instead of Reagan|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ1_ALxGbGk&feature=player_embedded|publisher=YouTube|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>