For me it is the WORD that produces all images. It is the key sign for all processes of moulding and organizing. When I use language, I try to induce the impulses of this power.. ..the power of evolution.
But language is not to be understood simply in terms of speech and words. That is our current, drastically reduced, understanding of language.. .Beyond language as verbalization lies a world of sound and form impulses, a language of primary sound without semantic content, but laden with completely different levels of information.
German artist, teacher, and theorist of art (1921–1986)
Joseph Beuys (May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986) was a German conceptual artist, who produced work in a number of forms including sculpture, performance art, video art and installations. He was inspired by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and the French artist Yves Klein. Beuys was an important teacher of famous neo-expressionist German artists as Jörg Immendorff, Walter Dahn, Anselm Kiefer and Blinky Palermo. Beuys held a lot of lectures in the U.S. Beuys enlarged the area of art to the whole life of mankind; everybody is an artist. He introduced the notion of social sculpture.
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I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of human kind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context... I can see such a use for the future as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future.
No area of life will be free from this concept in the future. That means that people will recognize the social organism, and they must think within this context. They must not only think about schools but also about the legal system and economic structures. They must always think through the entire social organism...
I want to found a free school for creativity and interdisciplinary research in Düsseldorf [where Beuys was teaching at the Art Academy]. I hope that I will succeed. Everyone can come to me. This school has a legal status.. .First a school is there to develop ability, that is consciousness, then the children will recognize what a future social structure should look like; that means that one can learn a social feeling or a social sense...
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.