Social Sculptures
I like America and America likes me | New York | May 1974 | 37:24 min b/w | sound | DE | camera: Helmut Wietz | collaborators: Ursula Block, Ernst Mitaka, Caroline Tisdall, Irene von Zahn | production: René Block Gallery Ltd, New York
From 21 to 25 May 1974, Joseph Beuys staged an encounter with a live coyote named Little John at the René Block Gallery in New York. The coyote is considered the sacred animal of the American First Nations and stands as a symbol of connection with nature, strength and adaptability.
Wrapped in felt, Joseph Beuys had himself transported in an ambulance from the airport to the gallery during his visit to America, without setting foot on US soil. Beuys spent three days and three nights with the felt blanket, a shepherd's crook, a triangle, a torch and a daily edition of the Wall Street Journal in a cage with the coyote. At the end of the action, he had himself wrapped in felt again and taken back to the airport in an ambulance.
The opening 1965 ... some strand ... How to explain pictures to the dead hare | Galerie Schmale, Düsseldorf, November 26, 1965 | 06:22 min | b /w sound | DE
Until the end, Joseph Beuys was an artist who delivered socially resistant works and did not allow for compromise in the process. The hare, which cleverly confuses its opponent with its zigzagging run, can be seen as an image for this mobility and desire for freedom. At the opening of his exhibition at the Schmale Gallery in Düsseldorf on 26 November 1965, Beuys walked through the exhibition with a dead hare, explaining the pictures to it. Visitors stood in front of the closed door and watched through the window. Beuys had covered his head with honey and gold leaf and strapped a felt and iron sole around his shoes. Only when the action was over were the visitors allowed to enter the exhibition. "Even a dead animal retains stronger powers of intuition", Beuys said, "than some human beings with their implacable rationalism".
7000 Oaks | 1982 | 9:23 min | color | sound | DE | June 21, 1982 in the program "Aspekte Extra. Museum of 100 Days - documenta 7 in Kassel" on ZDF | Total length: June 21, 1982 | Production: Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Mainz
Joseph Beuys considered human coexistence as a total work of art: "social sculpture". 7000 Oaks was one such social sculpture that took place outside the conventional art space. For documenta 7 (1982), Beuys had 7000 basalt stelae from different quarries piled on top of each other in front of the Fridericianum Museum. Each stele was to be placed together with an oak tree in Kassel. While the tree represented the organic, growing element, the basalt stele stood as a rigid element for death and time. As Beuys put it: "And there was nothing more obvious than to do something very simple, namely to work towards the most primitive ecological necessity, to preserve the basis of nature." The last tree was planted only after Beuys' death, at the opening of documenta 8 on 12 June 1987.
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