Joseph Beuys was a leading German Conceptual and performance artist. Known for his highly original and controversial themes, his practice of “social sculpture” attempted to make art more democratic by collapsing the space between life and art. His work I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) remains a seminal piece of performance art. In the work, Beuys, over the course of three days, locked himself in a room with a live coyote, armed only with layers of felt and a cane. “Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives,” he once mused. Born on May 12, 1921 in Krefield, Germany, Beuys fought ...