Coyote Makes Things Happen!!

As an accounting major I work well with facts, figures and manipulations of numbers… so it is really difficult for me to thoughtfully respond to essays that are more abstract and philosophic. I read the “Nature of Beauty in Contemporary Art” by Suzi Gablik, reread it and reread it again before it even began to make any sense what-so-ever to me. I really loved the opening line which describes the radical turnover of what is popular on the American art scene: “If you’re out, you’re out – you simply don’t count” - Sandro Cho.
Gablik goes on to describe the changing social definition of art away from galleries and wall hangings to more engaging and less structured art. On my first read through of the article, I agreed with art critic Hilton Kramer who said that “things with no relation to art were now being legitimized and accepted as art” I thought about his belief in relation to the art program the author describes called “The Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande River” by Dominique Mazeaud. I didn’t understand how the group of people picking up trash from the river and its surroundings was a piece of art. I get it that they were beautifying the planet by removing the miscellaneous cans, bottles and trash.
But where is the ART? James Hillman asked the same question of Mazeaud’s work in a conversation with Gablik saying “what gets metaphorized into her work”. I could understand if the bottles and trash were collected and made into an elaborate or simple piece of recycled found object art, but simply throwing the bags of trash away made the project seem more like community service than art. But I feel like Gablik included quotes from other critics and artists that made the traditional definition of art seem too restricted. Almost to make it seem like that could never be the definition of art unless we were completely closed minded to advances made in visual entertainment and intrigue.
The second article made me more confused about what is considered art because it described a performance piece or “action” created by Joseph Beuys. This piece featured Beuys sitting in a room with a coyotes for three days at the Rene Block Gallery in New York City. Not only did they stay in the room together, Beuy created a sequence of actions that were to be repeated for the three days. I was kind of in awe about how much though had been put into Beuy’s choice of subject: the coyote. Why a coyote? Apparently coyotes are the ultimate survivor according to mythological and evolutionary tales. They symbolize a couple of things to people in the United States including wildness and fierce instincts. In the Christianity the coyote is a satanic symbol according to David Levi Strauss in his essay “I Like America and America likes me”. It gets its satanic symbolism because of the threat it poses to shepherds and their flock. In Native American coyotes tales it is clear that the coyote is an “agent of change bringing order to chaos”. Was Beuys trying to create a show of order for the people?
But what must the public have thought when they viewed this action art piece?? How could someone walk off the street and understand the intense amount of thought that Beuys had to exert to create such a strong show of symbolism? If I had actually witnessed this live art I probably would have thought that Beuys was crazy. First, he was in a small room with a coyote. Second, I would not have understood the thought process behind the sequence of actions that Beuys repeated in the room.
I am not sure if I am too rules based to understand and appreciate art or if I am just confused by the flowing, flowery language utilized in art essays as compared to the dry, straightforward content of an accounting article. I think art should be displayable, that there must be an end product of some sort to show viewers but, besides that, what other criteria can we create for art without totally hampering new styles and interpretations of art.????