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Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the death-line: to dismantle in order to build 'A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART'.

— Joseph Beuys

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More quotes by Joseph Beuys

This is precisely what the shaman does in order to bring about change and development: his nature is therapeutic.

I try to go further on over the threshold where modern art ends and anthropological art has to start.

Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it is consciously done.

Art is the only power to free humankind from all repression.

My intention: healthy chaos, healthy amorphousness in a known medium which consciously warmed a cold, torpid form from the past, a convention of society, and which makes possible future forms.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joseph Beuys (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.