Beuys Art Quotes & Sayings

Art is not there simply to be understood ... It is more the sense of an indication or suggestion. — Joseph Beuys

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.' — Julia Glass

I Think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power , the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon, at first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details. (1973 — Joseph Beuys

A total work of art is only possible in the context of the whole of society. Everyone will be a necessary co- creator of a social architecture, and, so long as anyone cannot participate, the ideal form of democracy has not beenreached.Whether peopleare artists, assemblers of machines or nurses, it is a matter of participating in the whole. — Joseph Beuys

The American people deserve long-term, forward-thinking policies. — Dean Heller

I wrote a great deal ... but very little of any importance; there are not more than four of five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction. — G.H. Hardy

To make people free is the aim of art, therefore art for me is the science of freedom. — Joseph Beuys

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver. — Linus Torvalds

During my mental illness, thank God, my grandma was my human rescuer and angel, she ask me to stop taking the medication, leading to the recovering. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The only hope I had was when (in his youth)I saw one day a photograph of a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, a German sculptor of expressionistic style. This was perhaps the only example, Lehmbruck, between my sixteenth to nineteenth years in which I saw a possibility for art to be principally of interest to innovate some things, instead of writing a very boring, naturalistic repetition of what is already done by nature. — Joseph Beuys

To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. — Joseph Beuys

Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART. — Joseph Beuys

It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art. — Vladimir Nabokov

I work in the field of art, and you know how during a period of Marxist ideology, fewer people are inclined to believe in the power of the culture as a whole: they believe in the revolutionary potential of economics, class struggle theory ... Therefore it's time to show that art means the power of creativity, and it's time to define art in a larger way, to include science and religion too..(1973 — Joseph Beuys

You have to let go to better embrace the best. — Debasish Mridha

How awful to have a passion so intense it dictates your every breath and yet to lack the moral backbone to pursue it. The — James Rhodes

Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included ... something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. It's a Gigantic project. — Joseph Beuys

Art for me is the science of freedom. — Joseph Beuys

Relationships are difficult. It's life. You love life, so you fight. You fight because you love. Otherwise, you wouldn't fight. You work. You don't want to die. Why life is a fight, I don't know, but gosh! It is. — Sophie Marceau

When I was a kid and started to be obsessed by art in the 1980s, the art world was in this polarity Warhol/Beuys, Beuys/Warhol. Both expended the notion of art extremely, but in very different ways. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

Art can no longer be art today if it does not reach into the heart of our present culture and work transformatively within it that is, an art which cannot mould society - and through this naturally operate upon the core questions of our society - is not art. — Joseph Beuys

'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. — Jerry Saltz

As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism - the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies. — Gerhard Richter