Beuys Coyote- pre-order

2 color front and back silkscreen on white Comfort Colors Tee. 100% ring spun cotton

In 1974, the German conceptual artist, Joseph Beuys landed in a New York City airport whereupon assistants wrapped him in felt and brought him to the René Block Gallery in SoHo in an ambulance. There Beuys spent three consecutive days, for eight hours a day, living with a live coyote. Beuys attempted to connect with the animal by repeating symbolic gestures such as throwing leather gloves, gesticulating with a cane, and cloaking himself like a shepherd with the cane sticking out. The coyote was docile and occasionally hostile, tugging at the artist's felt. Beuys occasionally played a triangle and a tape recording of turbines. At the end of the performance, Beuys, still wrapped in felt, returned home in the same manner whence he came, as he was carriead from the airplane to the ambulance by stretcher and ambulance to the gallery in the same way, he never touched American soil.

Caroline Tisdall, Beuys's collaborator and travel companion, documented the performance in black and white photographs.

At the time of this performance, Beuys was already well known as a provocative German visual artist who used materials—felt and animal fat—based on his mythologized personal history: As a downed fighter pilot, a Tartar tribesman nursed Beuys back to health by insulating him in those materials. The felt in which Beuys wrapped himself during I Like America and America Likes Me was a therapeutic and shamanic symbol for Beuys through which he and his "social sculptures" (such as this performance) sought to heal societal psychic wounds.

During this time, Beuys saw the United States as divided over its involvement in the Vietnam War and its racial divisions and subjugation, and wanted his performance to address the split between Native and European ways of thinking. His selection of the coyote, a Native American symbol of transformation and trickery, invoked its Native creation myth of the Promethean teacher teaching humans to survive. Whereas settlers viewed coyotes as an aggressive predator to be exterminated, to Beuys, the coyote symbolized America's spirit. Beuys felt that America needed to reckon with the coyote to lift its trauma. It was Beuys's first trip to the United States. He had refused prior invitations based on American involvement in the Vietnam War, but agreed to travel given the country's exit from the war. 

The performance's title, I Like America and America Likes Me, also recalls the 7-Up soda advertising slogan, "You like it. It likes you." The piece is also known as Coyote

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