Quotes about Joseph Beuys

6 Sourced Quotes

I think Joseph Beuys is the most missunderstood artist of the 20th century. He opened a door into art for any idiot and now they traipse around believing that they have to bestow their favour on this rubbish, although it has absolutely nothing to say.

One time I even said to him [Joseph Beuys], 'Architecture is a catastrophe in Germany; we've got to change that.' And he told me, 'Go ahead, you can always sign for me if you ever need to.' I've never taken him up on the offer, though!

Isa Genzken
Isa Genzken
Somebody in Germany [the German artist Joseph Beuys, who frequently visited America to discuss and to do performances] has been talking about my 'silence', saying that it is overrated. What does that mean?

Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
When I went to school [Joseph Beuys was one of his art teachers and a very inspiring one] there was Pop Art. The Americans dismissed us from our responsibilities. They mailed us Care packages and Democracy. The search for our own identity was postponed. After the 'time of misfortune' as it has been called euphemistically, one thought in 1946 to begin anew. Even now we talk about the 'Point Zero'. But that is not possible; this is nonsense. The past is tabulated because to confront it would necessitate denial and disgust..

I want to say something about Picasso as a revolutionary. A revolution in the history of art is a reflection of the history of society. Art cannot revolutionize society. It is a reflection of that revolution.. You [Joseph Beuys] talking in the same interview] have revolutionized art. But I do not see that you have revolutionized society directly. You have depicted what has not yet existed.... art and life are not two separate realms, but they have shifted out of phase with each other.

I mean artists like Joseph Beuys, who is really a tough, strong artist. B E U Y S. He's been working in Germany for years. He doesn't bother with the burden of ideas. What he desires to do is fill your house with margarine. Let you live encased in fat, die encased in fat. He would take three hundred pounds of margarine and put it exactly where Pat Kelly is now, and then leave it there. That's sort of the tenor of his work.