How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare
January 31st, 2025
One of the artist’s most famous performances, Beuys covered his head first with honey, and then with fifty dollars worth of gold leaf. He cradles a dead hare in his arms, and strapped an iron plate to the bottom of his right shoe. Viewed from behind glass in the gallery, the audience could see Beuys walking from drawing to drawing, quietly whispering in the dead rabbit’s ear. As he walked around the room, the silence was pierced by intermittent sound of his footsteps; the loud crack of the iron on the floor, and the soundless whisper of the sole of shoe.
A staged art performance and completely understandable at that. They don't make art performances like that anymore. Today it is all about the context of which way the wind blows. Today. Because tomorrow it will blow in a different way. Or not at all. Or maybe there was never any wind… All that gets confusing easily.
Talking to a dead hare is something I could see myself doing. Maybe even whispering. Although I don't whisper much. Even to alive people and alive cats and dogs. Maybe I would whisper to dear hare, maybe it would come to me naturally. I don't know, I never tried it yet. Maybe whispering is something to do when the recipient is dead.
It would be easier to explain the nuances of northern Flemish proverbs presented in paintings of Brueghel, or seemingly the obvious-in-your-face symbolism of Magritte, or fleeting secrets of de Hooch's painfully clean and organized interiors to dead hare than explain the popular triumph of stupidity seen everywhere today.
Joseph Beuys got that right. And he got people to pay to see him doing it. That's another thing he got right. Fleecing the suckers (especially high-minded suckers) is always fulfilling.
