p. 249; Also cited in: Louwrien Wijers (1996). Writing as Sculpture: 1978 - 1987. p. 40
“

People who say: 'Ah, this Beuys will go back to the middle ages, or to the stone dwellers, cliff dwellers.' No, there is a misunderstanding. I have nothing against the materialistic methodology of analytics, but I think we have to enlarge this thing, not to get caught in a very restricted one-sidedness in our way of looking towards life. Because the problems of life, soul, humankind's spirit, the problems of intuition, imagination, and inspiration, the problems of birth and death, the problems of survival in a bigger shape, and to bring in the image of the meaning of man.

— Joseph Beuys

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "People who say: 'Ah, this Beuys will go back to the middle ages, or to the stone dwellers, cliff dwellers.' No, there is a misunderstanding. I have nothing against the materialistic methodology of analytics, but I think we have to enlarge this thing, not to get caught in a very restricted one-sidedness in our way of looking towards life. Because the problems of life, soul, humankind's spirit, the problems of intuition, imagination, and inspiration, the problems of birth and death, the problems of survival in a bigger shape, and to bring in the image of the meaning of man." in the context of "p. 249; Also cited in: Louwrien Wijers (1996). Writing as Sculpture: 1978 - 1987. p. 40" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Joseph Beuys" (Quotes, 1970s, Interview with Louwrien Wijers, 1979: Interview with Louwrien Wijers, 22nd November 1979 - in Beuys' studio in Düsseldorf, Germany; as quoted in: Joseph Beuys, Carin Kuoni. Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man. New York, 1993) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Joseph Beuys

About Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys (May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986) was a German conceptual artist, who produced work in a number of forms including sculpture, performance art, video art and installations. He was inspired by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and the French artist Yves Klein. Beuys was an important teacher of famous neo-expressionist German artists as Jörg Immendorff, Walter Dahn, Anselm Kiefer and Blinky Palermo. Beuys held a lot of lectures in the U.S. Beuys enlarged the area of art to the whole life of mankind; everybody is an artist. He introduced the notion of social sculpture.