Joseph Beuys Quotes

Only then would the insistence on participation of the action art of FLUXUS and Happening be fulfilled; only then would democracy be fully realized. Only a conception of art revolutionized to this degree can turn into a politically productive force, coursing through each person, and shaping history.

My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture.. ..or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.

My intention: healthy chaos, healthy amorphousness in a known medium which consciously warmed a cold, torpid form from the past, a convention of society, and which makes possible future forms.

Directly after the interviews his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet had given me [Louwrien Wijers] in Dharamsala, I enthusiastically informed Joseph Beuys how struck I was by the similarity in the viewpoint of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the ideas that he himself had been working towards in his 'Social Sculpture' for the last fifteen years. I was able to come to this conclusion because my questions in the first interview with his Holiness had for a large part been inspired by the subjects Joseph Beuys had put to discussion first through his 'Organisation for a Direct Democracy', and then through his 'Free international University,' the ecological 'Green movement' and the political party 'The Greens'. The immediate reply from Joseph Beuys to my remark was that 'he would very much want to set up a permanent co-operation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama'.

I had the feeling that another kind of life -- perhaps in a transcendental area -- would give me a better possibility to influence, or to work, or to act within this contradiction. So, this was my general feeling: on the one side, this beautiful undamaged nature form which I took a lot and had a lot of possibilities for contemplation, meditation, research, collecting things, making a kind of system; and on the other side, this social debacle that I felt already as a coming dilemma.

Let's finally try to talk about a system that transforms all the social organism into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included, whether it's work by Francisco Goya or Kounellis or mine, as well as agriculture, the sciences, or education or technology, something in which the principle of production and consumption really takes on a form of quality. One must not only transform the creation of paintings or sculptures, but the entire social form. It's a gigantic program.

Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it is consciously done.

I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heartwood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet.

I go to the typical state school and try to infiltrate it. Yes!.. .One can do something in the institutions in trying to infiltrate them, and outside one can do something to set a model in place.. .One must work with divers methods anyway. One must always carry on with what is possible.

For instance the idea of intuition, imagination, inspiration.. ..is related in the principle to an invisible world.. ..when I call these drawings 'The Secret Block' then I try to stress this part of reality as the most important part because spiritual existence is firstly.. .I find if we are only confronted with this hard part of the world, this already done part of the world, we are not.. ..related to the whole idea of reality.. ..the mission of the art is to make visible the whole reality..

The outward appearance of every object I make is the equivalent of some aspect of inner human life.. .My feelings then had this special kind of darkness – almost black like this mixture of rubber and tar. It is certainly an equivalent of the pathological state mentioned before, and expresses the need to create a space in the mind from which all disturbances were moved: an empty insulated space.

Here my idea is to declare that art is the only possibility for evolution, the only possibility to change the situation in the world. But then you have to enlarge the idea of art to include the whole creativity. And if you do that, it follows logically that every living being is an artist – an artist in the sense that he can develop his own capacity. And therefore it's necessary at first that society cares about the educational system, that equality of opportunity for self-realization is guaranteed.

Art alone makes life possible – this is how radically I should like to formulate it. I would say that without art man is inconceivable in physiological terms.

But I saw the relationship between people, I saw their thoughts, I saw their kind of expressionistic behavior in every difficult situation. I saw all the time the unclearness in the psychological condition of the people. You know, that was the time called the 'Roaring Twenties' and I felt that this expressionistic behavior, this unformed quality of soul power and emotion of life.. .I saw it, that it would lead to a kind of catastrophe. That was my general feeling.

For example, when we leave [The Documenta in] Kassel, a working group or maybe two working groups will work on things here at Kassel. We want to cause a snow-ball effect. We want to build a network throughout Europe that will work on these things, right? I can only say: we can only do it as well as possible.