Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

The legacies of famous artists who have done important works in New York City are strong enough to cause a large metaphysical weight to fall upon those who come to make new work.  The projects that have the most connections to the world are the ones who often suffer from the weight the most, and they are also up for the most scrutiny from the international critical art community.  It’s a deeply moving thing, then, when an artist can make something that causes others to take notice, because it takes extreme amounts of compassion as well as a large amount of arrogance.  It’s a rather tough combination, and not everyone is up for the task.

Young artists looking for an idea, or looking for ways they might make their idea manifest, often come to New York with the intention of exploring possibilities.  There is no real authority on the best way to do it, except to find a nice hotel and follow up on all of your connections.  It’s still a business based on networking, and it always has been.  It’s fascinating, then, to try to discover what kinds of networks the most bold artists of the 20th century had at their disposal.  Joseph Beuys was by no means an exemplary salesman of ideas, although his work was in many regards concrete examples of his complex philosophical arguments.

New generations of conceptual artists can do worse than trying to muster up the same weight of intention and example that Bueys did with his work, I Like America and America Likes Me.  In this performance, he was flown to New York, put it an ambulance wrapped in felt, and carried into a gallery where he would live with a coyote for four days.  In the process of the performance, there were many iconic actions that left gorgeous impressions on the visual archive of the century.  His work was in many ways a reflection of his views on the war, this was 1974 after all, and also his ideas of a humane world, where Native wisdom gets its sacred and elevated place back.  The only question in all of this is: how did the coyote feel about having to be locked up with a large man for four days?  That’s a statement that only the coyotes would understand.

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Filed by Herbert Jones at 10:35 am under Travel
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