Beuys’s coyote: 50 years after a provocative performance

Thursday 5/23/2024

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Last update 13:45

Joseph Beuys was a controversial figure in the history of 20th century art. A provocateur in whom some saw a genius and others a creator who was too cryptic, impossible to codify for the majority of the public. If instead of living between 1921 and 1986 he had lived in these contemporary times, dominated by social networks, his work would have had a significant impact, very much in line with the viscerality that the content on these platforms demands. The truth is that the works of this German artist – his sculptures, performances and installations – left no one indifferent. He addressed issues of politics, ecology, spirituality and even reflected on the function of art in society, always from an uncomfortable perspective and outside the comfort zone.

“We are all artists,” he once stated. When they replied that he talked about everything under the sun except art, he was categorical: “Everything under the sun is art!” In this spirit, one of his most famous performances took place in New York in 1974 and was titled “I Like America and America Likes Me.” On May 23 of that year, just half a century ago, he got off the plane that had brought him from his country to New York, was wrapped in felt and taken by ambulance to the René Block Gallery. There, in this performance, Beuys spent three days locked up with a wild coyote.

The work was presented as a “ritual of reconciliation” between the artist and the animal, through which Beuys tried to symbolize the nature and spirit of America. The proposal was interpreted as a criticism of American society and its treatment of nature and indigenous cultures. It is interesting to consider the context: in that first part of the seventies, after the devastating experience of the Vietnam War and the progressive deterioration of President Richard Nixon’s management, the United States was going through a complex and distressing moment. An environment that “gave birth”, for example, films like “The Exorcist”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Chinatown”, “Contact in France” and “Taxi Driver”, all of them a reflection of the state of things. This context evidently had an echo in Beuys.

For three days, the German artist and the coyote lived and interacted in a gallery space. What was tried to be exposed there was the relationship between man and nature. In addition to the felt blanket, Beuys used a shepherd’s staff and gloves as he interacted in various ways with the animal in the space. Every one of his movements was planned, none of them were random; all loaded with symbolism, in the belief in the power of art as an axis to generate transformations in society.

Fulwood Lampkin wrote that from this action the art world went into ecstasy. “Brushes or canvases were no longer needed to convey complex ideas. If he had a concept in mind, a guy could create art out of nothing. The confrontation between Beuys and the coyote symbolized for many the reconciliation between culture and nature. The howls and Teutonic words of the artist were a kind of meeting of cultures. The overall work was an attempt to heal America from the trauma caused by one of the largest genocides in history towards Native Americans.”

For those who admired him, Beuys was a kind of compass. Someone described it as “a living work of art.” Until his death in the 1980s, he was a supporter of causes such as Tibetan liberation and the German Green party. He stood outside the canons and used unconventional materials such as fat, honey and copper, to which he attributed symbolic and energetic properties. But he was also a builder of his own myth.

Teresa Sesé, in a text published on the La Vanguardia portal, stated that her life and her work are inseparable and both are loaded with symbolism. “A great storyteller, he created his own myth by inventing that while fighting as a Luftwaffe pilot in World War II, his plane crashed in Crimea. A tribe of Tatars found him unconscious in the snow and he survived by covering his body with fat and wrapping him in felt to keep him warm. The truth, much more prosaic, is that he was rescued by a German commando and taken to a military hospital where there was no grease or felt.

Although still controversial (it could have easily been integrated into the parodic miniseries “Bellas Artes” starring Oscar Martínez), Beuys’ work continues to find echo in the contemporary art scene, challenging pre-established notions about art and its role as a catalyst for change. social.