Joseph Beuys Quotes

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"¦ I would say man does not consist only of chemical processes, but also of metaphysical occurrences. The provocateur of the chemical processes is located outside the world. Man is only truly alive when he realizes he is a creative, artistic being"¦ Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act.

In places like universities, where everyone talks too rationally, it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear.

I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time.

Man is really not freeing many aspects. He is dependent on his social circumstances, but he is free in his thinking, and here is the point of origin of sculpture. For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture. The thought is sculpture.

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.

Truth must be found in reality, not systems.