JOSEPH BEUYS: ‘Everyone is an artist.’
S+ Stimulant: Joseph Beuys
Text below from Wikipedia:
JOSEPH BEUYS was motivated by a utopian belief in the power of universal human creativity and was confident in the potential for art to bring about revolutionary change.
Beuys created the term social sculpture to illustrate his idea of art’s potential to transform society. Social sculpture is a specific example of the extended concept of art. As an artwork, it includes human activity that strives to structure and shape society or the environment. The central idea of a social sculptor is an artist, who creates structures in society using language, thought, action, and object.
It was during the 1960s that Beuys formulated his central theoretical concepts concerning the social, cultural and political function and potential of art. Indebted to Romantic writers such as Novalis and Schiller, Beuys was motivated by a utopian belief in the power of universal human creativity. He was confident in the potential for art to bring about revolutionary change; society as a whole could be regarded as one great work of art to which each person can contribute creatively.
Beuys’s most famous phrase, borrowed from Novalis, is: ‘Everyone is an artist’.
Published: October 17th, 2011