Coyote I
About this artwork
This is one of a pair of images showing Beuys's 1974 'action' 'I Like America and America Likes Me'. The 'action' began as soon as the artist landed in America. He was wrapped in felt at the airport, and driven in an ambulance to René Block's Manhattan gallery. He spent three days in the gallery space with a coyote before being driven straight back to the airport and flown home. The coyote is sacred to Native Americans, and represented an aspect of the country's past that Beuys liked. Each day of the 'action', he made two piles of the current 'Wall Street Journal'. These would be duly torn or urinated on by the coyote – his statement on contemporary America.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artist:Joseph BeuysGerman (1921 - 1986)
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title:Coyote I
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date created:1980
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materials:Photograph, black and white, on canvas with oil paint
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measurements:45.20 x 70.20 cm (framed: 66.00 x 90.80 x 8.50 cm)
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object type:
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credit line:ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
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accession number:AR00695
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gallery:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
German artist Beuys believed that art was integral to everyday life. According to Beuys his own art was shaped by an experience early in his life. As a Luftwaffe pilot during the war, he claimed that he was shot down over the Crimea and was saved by nomadic Tartars. Barely alive, he was wrapped in...
