Joseph Beuys Quotes

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

What is art but a way of seeing?

There is no art without contemplation.

In the domain of art there is no light without heat.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

How do I define a work of art? It is not an asset in the stock-exchange sense, but a man's timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of at any time, that of magically producing life out of nothing.

Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue.

What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what-eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.

Born of the sensibility, art sows and creates life in its turn.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.

We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.

Art is an intersection of many human needs.

Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.

Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

You need the art in order to love the life.

Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.

Art is seduction, not rape.

Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul.

Art informs life in so many ways, and vice versa.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.