Energy Plan for Western Man

In January 1974, forty years after Stein's American lecture tour, the German artist Joseph Beuys performed a ten-day lecture tour of New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis – "Energy Plan for Western Man." During the talks, Beuys produced diagrammatic drawings, such as Sun State (1974), on blackboards and other surfaces. John Dillinger, killed in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater, once again takes part in the action.

I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity. A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws. For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and of the imposed order and for this reason is isolated.

Joseph Beuys, in Beuys. Tracce in Italia