Quotes from Joseph Beuys

Every man is a plastic artist who must determine things for himself.

Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives

After I am dead I would like people to say: 'Beuys understood the historical situation. He altered the course of events'. I hope in the right direction.

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.

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

Art for me is the science of freedom.

I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.

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.

I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.

Truth must be found in reality, not systems.

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

Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.

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

Every man is an artist.

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.

To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.

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