What it Means to Plant a Forest

by Agnes Denes

What it means to plant a forest as a work of art—well, many things. For one, it is taking art out of the museum or gallery and changing its preciousness and collectibility but not its beauty or meaning. It is creating something limitless, unbound and timeless, although the works have borders (boundaries) and use four dimensions clearly defined.

Just taking the art out of the machinery of the art world is a joy by itself.

The fact that a forest planted for the future is also a good thing, adds to the disobedience of its also being beautiful in its intricate patterning—different from the garden, landscape, architecture or even nature in its natural naked form. Beauty if frowned upon right now in art -isms, which of course means nothing because it can come back any time through a clever article by some critic claiming it is now time again for beauty.

So in a sense, planting a forest as art is a taboo. It is beautiful and it is a good thing, ecologically sane land restoration and calling to account in the face of industrial expansion, aggression and exploitation. In art language, a taboo. If art, it should not be benign, it should be a little malignant. Beauty is the sure bearer of sentimentality and weakness, and usefulness is deadly (fatal). Art should be above all that, it should nauseate, disturb, arouse, be cool and removed. Okay, why not, but I feel that beauty can also be so brilliant and breathtaking that it disturbs. And art can be useful in an ailing world and natural, not artificial and still be great art. Plato, Plato. Mirror. Mirror.

Planting a forest is opening up the earth to receive the seeds or seedlings like the canvas is prepared, gessoed and the ground sketch applied. There is no border here, no edge of the canvas, and thus no restrictions. The forest is patterned but spills over its boundaries in time as in space and concept; it means re-establishing disturbed and destroyed land, creating roots to hold eroding land and keeping global warming down, photosynthesis up, clean ground water and a million things trees do besides grow and become beautiful. In spite of all this, my forests are not just restoration or reforestation, the fee corporations must pay for destroying fully grown forests for profit. In addition to helping the environment, my forests are serious aesthetics to become serious forests. The trees are planted according to complex mathematical formulas so that the intervention of the human intellect with nature is not hidden but pointed out, revealed, calling attention to their perfect blending until the hybrid is established. Yet the trees are still nature’s bounty, natural and real. This kind of paradox is at the bottom of my work at its best.

And my forests are not landscaping either, where the trees are put there for contrast among paths and bushes to decorate a park or garden.

Trees see so much history, they sway and whisper, hibernate and turn to blossoms.

A serious forest means business, not cutting business for profit, but demanding attention, respect, awe even if beautiful and mysterious. Patterning and mathematics mixed with nature, the human intellect pitted against and positioned with nature’s intelligence not to win but to unite instinct with intellect, process with pattern, back to a state and forward to a hybrid. Unite the state of the art processes of the mind on the edge of knowledge and let it blend with nature. Don’t be afraid, it won’t disturb either. The hybrid will be a new state of existence, a new form of art. That it is also a gift to future generations, is added attraction, that it is land reclamation may be a plus, but first of all it is a forest and it is art. The human intellect blending with the majesty of nature.

I am an artist in the truest sense of the word: I live, think and create art all my life and my creativity is all consuming and never ebbs. It is a lush forest that grows in often barren land.

© 1983 Agnes Denes

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