Claudia made note of some specific text from this site, repasted below:

Beuys’ Theory of Social Sculpture

“My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture. . . or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.

THINKING FORMS–how we mold our thoughts or


SPOKEN FORMS–how we shape our thoughts into words or


SOCIAL SCULPTURE–how we mold and shape the world in which we live

SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS; EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST.

That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished, processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change.”

Art and Life

In making the statement “the silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated,” Beuys rejected Duchamp’s critique of Fluxus–that their ideas lacked ingenuity since he had anticipated them. He also rejected Duchamp’s anti-art concept, or the notion that ordinary objects are elevated to the status of an art object simply by being deemed as such by an artist. Beuys did not believe in the elitist isolation of the art object from everyday life, saying, “It has become the territory of a few intellectuals, far from the life of people.” He renounced the distinction of the category “aesthetic” by claiming “aesthetics is the human being in itself.” In moving beyond this limitation, he hoped to apply the artistic principle of creativity directly to society.

“But if the concept of art becomes anthropological it is totalized and really does refer to human creativity, to human work and not simply the work of artists. Why anyway should the term art refer to the work of painters and sculptors? That is simply a restriction that never existed before.”

Beuys’ art is always in some way directly or indirectly autobiographical. His early drawings reflect–are graphic compositions of–fragments of his past, both his personal past and his collective German past, in fairy tales, science, literature, philosophy, and art history. These fragments formed the metaphorical ground of his performance art. In his discovery of performance art, Beuys combined the theatrical elements of time and space with props and a directional score. From these actions new props, objects, and relics are born, and borne further, creating new fragments of Beuys’ own art-historical mythology–his life’s work. This cyclical system is at work on many levels, over and over, connecting Beuys’ visual and performance art.

In his shift to actions, Beuys’ own function as the artist as a medium of creativity also shifts–from guiding the hand that gives plastic form to thoughts and intuition through drawing and sculpture, he now assumes an active role in a new dimension as a performer-shaman. Layering and manipulating “fragments,” Beuys acts out a ritual which simultaneously is the creation of a new work of art, and a new pedagogical model, a teaching-by-example of how to live.

Beuys’ goal was not to create a parallel reality through theater–he sought to erase the line separating art and life in the tradition of the radical modernist gestures wrought by Marcel Duchamp and Bertold Brecht, whose evolutionary steps led to the erasure of this line. But Beuys’s goal–his Gesamtkunstwerk (”total artwork”)–is the revolutionary creation of a symbiotic whole–art as a model for life–life must be renewed by the lessons of art in order to be sustained.

“Everyone is an artist”

One of Joseph Beuys’ fundamental messages, delivered again and again in lectures, interviews, and artworks, was that human beings can and must learn to be creative in many different ways. His famous slogan “Everyone is an artist” was not meant to suggest that all people should or could be creators of traditional artworks. Rather, he meant that we should not see creativity as the special realm of artists, but that everyone should apply creative thinking in their own area of specialization–whether it be law, agriculture, physics, education, homemaking, or the fine arts.

Beuys imagined that an expanded application of human creativity–and the broader definition of “art” that would follow–would result in something he called “social sculpture.” While the term encompassed many things for Beuys, it might broadly be defined as a conscious act of shaping, of bringing some aspect of the environment–whether the political system, the economy, or a classroom–from a chaotic state into a state of form, or structure. Social sculpture should be accomplished cooperatively, creatively, and across disciplines (he often cited the example of the beehive as an ideal working model).

Claudia Responds:

I was once a fan of him, now a days, I tend more towards a “duchampien” view of art and life. Ironicaly, up to today, I had no idea that Beuys and Duchamp had sort of a philosophical war. The social activist and provocateur against the zen master. But I still find Beuys provocative mise-en-scène unique. No one like him broke the frame of the artwork, to release it’s activity into the wide open world. Duchamps view doesn’t, in my understanding, exclude Beuys Welyanschaung, and viceversa. What Beuys has in life force and energy, Duchamp has in cheerfull subtleness and ironic contemplation, Beuys pushed the meaning of art into everyday social life, and Duchamp showed us that art, like in quantum theory, is no-thing… But I might just be saying a lot of crap, haha.

Cheers, Claudia