An Artist, a Coyote, and a Cage: Joseph Beuys in New York 1974

ON PRE-SALE NOW / SHIPPING MAY 2024

11.25 x 10.25 INCHES / 84 PAGES    HARDCOVER

EDITION OF 500

$45.00

May 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Joseph Beuys’ infamous piece of performance art staged in New York City: I Like America and America Likes Me. The premise—a man and a wild coyote locked together inside a room—helped build a cult following for Beuys that has made him alternately revered and reviled throughout the contemporary art world. Stephen Aiken’s photographs of this May 1974 "action" by Beuys—recently unearthed and previously unpublished—offer a fresh look at this seminal art happening. These striking images are supplemented with a set of previously unseen color photos taken by Aiken of Beuys at Greenwich Village’s New School in January 1974: verbally sparring onstage with fellow artist Hannah Wilke and jousting with a raucous audience that threatened to turn his lecture into a brawl.

"Is Beuys simply 'a man in a room with a coyote' or is that just the foot-wide and mile-deep entry point for an exploration of everything from Native American genocide to the modern-day destruction of the natural environment—an exploration which could have ended, at any moment, with a bloody mauling by a coyote? Regardless, whether Beuys is pulling his felt blanket taut around him or jauntily waving to Aiken’s camera lens, it’s impossible to look away."

—Brett Sokol, excerpt from the foreword to An Artist, a Coyote, and a Cage