Thursday, May 12, 2011

words from a great artist. (143/365)



Joseph Beuys
(May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986)



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.

~interview with Willoughby Sharp, 1969; as quoted in Energy Plan for the Western man - Joseph Beuys in America compiled by Carin Kuoni, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1993, p. 87.


But one is forced to translate thought into action and action into object.. ..I am not a teacher who tells his students only to think. I say: act; do something: I ask for result. It may take different forms. It can have the form of sound, or someone can do a book, make a drawing or a sculpture. I don’t care.

~ibid., p. 92.


READ more quotes here & here.

LISTEN to Joseph Beuys - "Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne", 1970. (excerpt 2:00)

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