I LIKE AMERICA AND AMERICA LIKES ME

Joseph Beuys- I Like America and America likes me from zazie on Vimeo.

Beuys invokes the idea of social sculpture every woman every man an artist, infiltrate science art economics, environment, architecture politics.

He saw the same sicknesses in America as he saw in Germany. But in a way he is the artist who pushed the nature and the environment to the forefront of the art-world by spending time with a wild coyote and living peacefully with it. Or his work in establishing the German Green party. Or see his 7,000 oaks as both social sculpture and social action. In his work as with much of the Fluxus group Beuys was redefining just what Art was as well as what it could be. And this was something that had very firm foundations in everday life.

Yet Beuys had refused to enter America until the Vietnam war had come to an end

In 'I Love America And America Loves Me" we see Beuys in action. A puzzled audience talk about his art as all encompassing and holistic but cannot understand where the boundaries are to which he responds that he is interested in the healing of society and the reorganization of values.

In many ways he did that through the a shamanistic art fusing environmental and conceptual thinking. His belief system was a direct challenge to the state of the world as he saw it and not, as now, mere conceptual playfulness or self-referentialism. Art in tune with the zeitgeist, not the dollar.

For your interest. Joseph Beuys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys