Angstsprung des elektrisierten Fuchses (The Electrified Fox Jumping in Fear)

Executed in 1953, Angstsprung des elektrisierten Fuchses (The Electrified Fox Jumping of Fear) is a refined watercolour by Joseph Beuys and a truly outstanding example of the artist’s early work. Angstsprung des elektrisierten Fuchses portrays the death of a fox, one of the animals most frequently depicted in Beuys’ menagerie. The creature’s silhouette is delicately ephemeral formed of strokes of watercolour and graphite that elegantly convey its body. Curator Anne Seymour described the artist’s approach to materials, writing: ‘Although the appearance of a drawing is not of first importance to Beuys, its colour or substance are likely to have some sort of relationship with its subject or meaning. Beuys uses materials in drawing very much as substance, and in ways comparable to how he would use them on a much larger three-dimensional scale’ (A. Seymour, ‘The Drawings of Joseph Beuys’, in Joseph Beuys Drawings, exh. cat., City Art Galleries, Leeds 1983, p.20). The artist’s materially innovative approach connects the works on paper to Beuys’s larger practice. Angstsprung des elektrisierten Fuchses appears to prefigure the artist’s universally celebrated performance I like America and America Likes Me, 1974, for which he wrapped himself in felt and spent an entire week living with a coyote inside Manhattan’s René Block Gallery. For both Angstsprung des elektrisierten Fuchses and I like America and America Likes Me, Beuys presents two animals frequently mythologised as cunning, deceptive tricksters – qualities often ascribed to the artist himself. Indeed, in his attempt to disrupt artistic convention, Beuys embodied an idealistic and almost supernatural alternative to the supremacy of American art, in particular the excessiveness of Pop Art and the essentiality of Minimalism.