‘Warhol Marilyn’ (1964) by Elaine Sturtevant.
Elaine Sturtevant spent her artistic career of over 40 years remaking works by artists like Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, Paul McCarthy, Felix Gonzales Torres and others. She mastered the techniques behind each work, like painting, sculpture, film, silk screen, performance, etc.
‘Beuys Fettstuhl’ (1993) by Elaine Sturtevant.
‘Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform)’ (2004) by Elaine Sturtevant.
A definite highlight (for me) of the Whitney Biennial was the work ‘We like America and America likes us’ (2010), by The Bruce High Quality Foundation.
With its title and form referring to Joseph Beuys’s performance ‘I like America and America likes me’ (where Beuys was picked up from the airport with a Cadillac ambulance and brought to the gallery, where he lived with a coyote for three days) an old ambulance stands in one of the rooms of the Whitney, a film playing on its windshield. The film is comprised of different clips taken from youtube videos. The female voiceover tells us about her difficult relationship to America, while it is constantly unclear whether America is a man, a woman, a lover, a friend, or really just the country.
The original video that’s shown on the windshield of the ambulance.
‘Sonne statt Reagan’ (1983) popsong by Joseph Beuys.
A protest song against America and its use of nuclear weapons.
‘I like America and America likes me’, Beuys’ famous performance in New York (1974).
In May 1974 Beuys flew to New York and was taken by ambulance to the site of the performance, a room in the René Block Gallery on East Broadway. He shared this room with a wild coyote, for eight hours over three days. At times he stood, wrapped in a thick, grey blanket of felt, leaning on a large shepherd’s staff. At the end of the three days, Beuys hugged the coyote that had grown quite tolerant of him, and was taken to the airport. Again he rode in a veiled ambulance, leaving America without having set foot on its ground.
