Artists in Ad Land: Joseph Beuys

A couple of linden trees from Joseph Beuys’s famous Documenta work 7,000 Eichen—Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung (7000 Oaks—City Forestation Instead of City Administration) were chopped down the other day, as Artforum relates. In this event lies a strange link to Ad Land. To pull together funds for this hugely expensive project (404 million DM in 1982) Beuys embraced the celebrity cash cow making-an-ad-in-Japan.