Introduction
Two forces approach each other and they dance. Joseph Beuys’ (1921-1986) I like America and America likes me is a social sculpture from 1974. Beuys tries to purify, via spiritualism, social tensions between the United States of America and Germany after the World Wars. This artist is important because Beuys is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century for his multidisciplinary artworks and for his philosophy that art has potential to transform society. Beuys has inspired many contemporaries such as the art collective The Thing and Pedro Reyes with his work Disarm.
This artwork has been written extensively about because this artwork was performed in New York City and thus it seems to appeal more to the Western art world. There are many authors who have published about his works such as C. Ottomann, et al (2010); who explains using interviews with Beuys why trauma and catharsis are important components of his work, and Elizabeth Sutton, associate professor at the University of Northern Iowa (2017), who intensively analyses the use of canines in this piece. I will use these authors for understanding the artist and its artwork throughout my research.
The main research question is; To what extent can Joseph Beuys’ I Like America and America likes me be defined as Aristotelian Theatre?
The research involving this question started with reading Michael Fried’s Art and Objecthood (1967) into the theatricality of art, which I questioned the label of this artwork due to similarities encountered in theatre. Then I researched classical Greek theatre with Aristotle’s Poetics (335BC) and art performances with interviews of Beuys, and Marina Abramovic who is an artist advocating for performance.
The structure of my paper is to compare and contrast I like America and America likes me with Poetics, and then discuss whether this artwork could be regarded as theatre.
Word Count: 316
I: Aristotelian Theatre in I like America and America likes me
Although Poetics is an attributed but uncertain version of Aristotle’s (384-322BC) philosophy on tragedy, it presents a model of success of the Greek theatre; it is still used nowadays to generate theatre productions. In I like America and America likes me by Joseph Beuys, the artist’s structure of the performance has a resemblance with the model of Greek theatre and I want to question whether the artwork should be defined as art performance, or as a version of Aristotelian theatre. I will refer to I like America and America likes as a social sculpture throughout this paper.
By the introduction of the three unities in Poetics; time, place, action, Aristotle defined parameters with the aim to outline the scope of classical Greek tragedy . In I like America and America likes me the performance takes place three days rather than the one day that is limited in the Poetics . With regards on this aspect one could argue that the performance had no relationship to classical theatre, however, it is known that for three days he interacted approximately eight hours with Little John, the coyote, which in total it would be a day. This sum of the hours projects the undeniable subtle approach of theatre in the social sculpture.
The plot in Aristotelian theatre is described as the most important component built up out of a beginning, a middle, and an end; there should not be any unsolved question, and the matter should be universal. I like America and America likes me according to Sutton it is a “piece with multiple layers” that expand and contract for its indexical proportions. This means that its iconography depends severely on context due to the possibility of multiple interpretations. However, the main plot of the social sculpture, according to Beuys, is to encounter a social problem, like the tensed diplomacy between the United States of America and Germany after both World Wars, and be a part of the solution.
Beuys seems to use what Aristotle called “ordered structure” in which the events from the plot are connected by sequential events such as arriving in New York City covered in felt, and reaching the opening of the René Block Gallery. Then the interaction with Little John, the “dance” between animals would be a fundamental connection between the two ends of the social sculpture called the climax. At last, the closure, Joseph Beuys confines with the coyote in a last embrace, and returns to Germany without seeing the New York City or touching any ground of the United States. There is a concise structure of beginning, middle, and end in the social sculpture. Aristotle explains that the series of actions that constitutes a plot in Aristotelian theatre are events that are “closed at both ends, and connected in between” . The social sculpture starts as Beuys comes to New York City and ends with him returning back to his country, this presents the idea of a plot being “whole” , and therefore complete without any lose ends.
The characters in theatre should be secondary to the main plot; it is also the second most important component in Poetics. Aristotle argues that the characters should be recognizable for the audience, and the character should be consistent throughout the plot. In this case, both the artist and the coyote are the characters of this production. They act accordingly to their roles, as human and beast, interacting through meaningful actions. For being recognizable to the audience, both the coyote and Beuys are confined by interpretations in the many metaphors that they portray, however, in this “dimension” Beuys and the Coyote are seen as the animal and the human. They represent the physical reality of this ritual, and the characters they portrayed are therefore recognizable as human an animal.
However, Heath mentions that “Animals act by instinct or acquired habit” and thus implies that in fact an animal, such as the coyote cannot be an actor which debunks the approach of this social sculpture as theatre. This also supports that because animals cannot be actors because they act by instinct, then they cannot be consistent with the plot of a theatre play as they do not know there is a narration in process. Furthermore, Aristotle makes the exception that if it is expected for a specific character to act irrational then it is called “consistently inconsistent” character which is allowed in Aristotelian theatre. This permits the wild coyote to be considered a character.
The component of thought in Aristotelian theatre is present in this artwork in one specific moment; when Joseph Beuys is able to hug the coyote after hours of playing with each other. This unifying moment is crucial to catharsis, purification, because it gets rid of the emotional excess of the social sculpture and thus relieves the pressure of tension which puts the audience and symbolism into a balance state of mind . In this moment, the goal of Joseph Beuys to create a transformation on the metaphorical relationship of both entities is present. His Shamanistic vision on purifying Germany and the United States of America with this social sculpture is a success .
Melody and diction are essential components according to Aristotle, but that may not seem that are present in this piece due to the lack of music and the lack of dialogue. However, one can argue that language and melody are the types of rhythm that is used through the actors; the bodies are moving through space with reciprocal and repetitive actions. The coyote is sleeping, pulling the blanket from Beuys, urinating, starring out the window, chewing on the gloves. The man rings the triangle, uncovers and covers himself with the blanket, tosses his gloves towards the coyote, lies down to look at the coyote. All these actions are the melody and diction, the rhythm that ultimately lead the social sculpture into its catharsis.
Aristotelian theatre components that are noted in Poetics by Aristotle are seen throughout the social sculpture.
Word Count: 1048
II: Performance in I like America and America likes me
Performance is a new area of the art world that was developed by various artists in the twentieth century that had been making these non-traditional presentations after World War II. The world radically changed by breaking down barriers between art and life, Beuys even suggested that “Art alone makes life possible(…)”. Artists of the late twentieth century were unbound from the traditional concepts of art into a progress of multi-disciplinary methods due to several changing political, such as the Vietnam War, and socioeconomical factors, such as the Cold War opposing ideologies.
Beuys became one of the pioneers in art performance who created the concepts of “Actions” and “Social sculpture” referring to the way art should communicate to and change society. He was involved in art environmental movements which led to him become a co-founder of the Political Part for Animals in Germany in 1966. This was essential to his artistic life because he had been making “actions” that involved animals such as one of his pioneer performances called How to explain pictures to a dead hare (1965), that involved spiritualist and shamanistic ideas .
He did not call I like America and America likes me a performance but rather a reciprocal “social sculpture” because it involved societal issues that transcended into the metaphysical space. His concepts of “actions” involved the idea of live presentations involving the use of thoughts, objects, and events. His performances were made once each time and thus his artworks are mostly viewed with documentation. The social sculpture I like America and America likes me was documented by two friends of Beuys; Caroline Tisdall in the form of photography which later made a book with the photographs , and Helmut Wietz in form of a 16mm film which was acquired by the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Netherlands in 1980 and is not currently on display.
Marina Abramovic, also a pioneer in performance art during the late twentieth century until now, is an advocate for performing arts and talks publicly about the definition of it. She defines performance art as a moment that is alive and it is not theatre because it will not be repeated and the artist will not replace anybody, but rather be a part of it. She also defines the “realness” of performances; in theatre if an actor cuts himself with theatrical property, also known as prop, the blood would not be real because it is acting for an audience, for drama. However, in performance art, the object used would be a real knife and real blood would come out of the skin from the body of the performer; it would be an unrehearsed live action rather than a practiced piece . Abramovic also describes that performance art is ephemeral because its action is temporal, “(..)there was nothing to sell with the performance. It was just memory(..)” , and thus documentation of these artworks are essential for its distribution and preservation in history.
In the social sculpture I like America and America likes me the performance was done in 1974 and it is never going to be done again. Beuys repeated materials such as felt, and beeswax, for his spectacle, but never repeated his artworks. The documentation of the photographs by Tisdall and the film by Wietz are the only way for the public to know what happened in this action. The piece was not scripted nor it was practiced beforehand and its “memory” will be passed down from artists to artists as an urban legend. We could further question if whether this ephemeral memory and documentation made the artwork from a performance to a video work since its epilogue.
Performance art is based on the moment of action as described by Abramovic, however Poetics describes theatre as a future speculation as what would have happened, rather than has happened . This implies that both have different perspectives on time and therefore are separate from each other. Furthermore, theatre is presented in a direct way towards the audience, like a presentation, and not mediated by a narrator; the events that happen in the plot are acted at a linear time and henceforth “performed” as a performance art would. Both theatre and performance art are the “key to human experience” as they have a thin boundary; they come from the same elements such as movement, rhythm, and communication .
The actor in a theatre performance according to Howard Panter, founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group Ltd, “is the person who tells someone else’s story(..)” therefore the role of Beuys in I like America and America likes me is not a character because he is not telling someone else’s story, impersonating, but rather like Michael Kirby in A Formalist theatre stated “ ‘being’, nobody or nothing other than himself” an thus a performer. His actions were planned and repetitive, but his partner, the coyote, was still a wild unpredictable force in the social sculpture. In I like America and America likes me there was a goal of becoming acquainted with the coyote but there was no script that Beuys used to guide himself to achieve this. The performance had no antagonistic character, nor peripeteia (sudden change of fortune), nor anagnorisis (recognition, a sudden awareness) that are key elements for a classical Greek tragedy.
Performance art and Aristotelian Theatre are complex labels with their own rules and interpretations.
Word Count: 942
Conclusion
The first chapter consisted in comparing the social sculpture of I like America and America likes me from Joseph Beuys with Poetics by Aristotle, in which various components such as plot and time were present in Beuys artwork and how did they worked within the piece. The second chapter consisted on the historical context of performance art, Joseph Beuys own concepts on performance, Marina Abramovic’s definition of performance, and finally a contrast of the social sculpture with the structures of theatre according to various authors.
The answer for the main research question, which is “To what extent can Joseph Beuys’ I Like America and America likes me be defined as Aristotelian Theatre? “, the extent of basic components in Poetics does resemble as Aristotelian Theatre, however its overall dynamics and complex layers of interpretation in both theatre and performance art seem to not have a straight definition. This essay finishes by stating that Like America and America likes me seems to have both spectrums on live presentations, and suggest that further research on the topics, theatre and performance art, should be made to establish a definition.
Word Count: 186