A description of Joseph Beuys’s famous Action from May 1974, entitled I Like America and America Likes Me: “Beuys spent three days in a room with a coyote. After flying into New York, he was swathed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery where the Action took place, without having once touched American soil. As Beuys later explained: ‘I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.’ The title of the work is filled with irony. Beuys opposed American military actions in Vietnam, and his work as an artist was a challenge to the hegemony of American art. Beuys’s felt blankets, walking stick and gloves became sculptural props throughout the Action. In addition, fifty new copies of the Wall Street Journal were introduced each day, which the coyote acknowledged by urinating on them. […] At the end of the Action, Beuys was again wrapped in felt and returned to the airport. For Native Americans, the coyote had been a powerful god, with the power to move between the physical and the spiritual world. After the coming of European settlers, it was seen merely as a pest, to be exterminated. Beuys saw the debasement of the coyote as a symbol of the damage done by white men to the American continent and its native cultures. His action was an attempt to heal some of those wounds.” This image documenting the piece is haunting. Update: Reader Christopher King just wrote to let me know that artifacts leftover from Beuys’s performance are on permanent display at Dia:Beacon.

Also at the Walker Art Center, I saw the show Statements: Beuys, Flavin, Judd. The exhibition certainly delivered on its promise of offering three different “statements” about post-WWII sculpture, but I found myself most drawn, as I often am, to the work of Joseph Beuys. In particular to this postcard, from the Walker’s permanent collection, which includes Beuys’s famous stamp for Deutsche Studentenpartei. As F.E. Rakuschan explains, “In 1967 he founded the German Student Party (Deutsche Studentenpartei), followed in 1971 by the Organisation for Direct Democracy (Organisation für Direkte Demokratie) and in 1972 by the Free International University (Freie internationale Universität). No doubt, Joseph Beuys in his roles as teacher and artist, who also showed great talent in making use of the mass media, substantially contributed to furthering critical thinking and action by many of his fellow human beings. At the same time, Beuys also reached the highest rankings on the art charts during his lifetime. His objects, sometimes just parts preserved from some Action, were soon traded like relics and ended up in exhibitions and museum collections all over the world.” Part of this body of organizational and conversational work is Beuys’s “We don’t do it without the rose,” also included in the Walkers show. A beautiful piece. More of Beuys’s ephemera is collected here.