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

—  Joseph Beuys

Three quotes of Joseph Beuys, in 'An interview with Joseph Beuys,', Willoughby Sharp, published in 'Artforum,' November 1969; as quoted in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Lucy R. Lippard, University of California Press, 1973, p. 121
1960's

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it is consciously done." by Joseph Beuys?
Joseph Beuys photo
Joseph Beuys 50
German visual artist 1921–1986

Related quotes

Alan Watts photo

“Zen … does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

Alan Watts book The Way of Zen

The Way of Zen, Pt. 2, Ch. 2 (1957)

Andrei Tarkovsky photo

“Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act?”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 241
Context: Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?

Lil Wayne photo

“Top peeled back like the skin of a potato.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Upgrade
Official Mix tapes, Da Drought 3 (2007)

“Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 273.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“An act of the mind of which we are conscious, as such, is called freedom. An act without consciousness of action is called spontaneity. I by no means assume as necessary any immediate consciousness of the act, but merely, that on subsequent reflection thou shouldst perceive it to be an act. The higher question of what it is that prevents any such state of indecision, or any consciousness of the act, we may perhaps subsequently be able to solve. This act of the mind is called thought and it is said that thought is a spontaneous act, to distinguish it from sensation, in which the mind is merely receptive and passive.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 44
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

Emil M. Cioran photo

“The sphere of consciousness shrinks in action; no one who acts can lay claim to the universal, for to act is to cling to the properties of being at the expense of being itself, to form a reality to reality's detriment.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Temptation to Exist (1956)

Aleister Crowley photo

“Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

“Conscious mind is a spatial analog of the world and mental acts are analogs of bodily acts. Consciousness operates only on objectively observable things. Or, to say it another way with echoes of John Locke, there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in behavior first.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 2, p. 66
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).
1910s

“Reading is like the sex act — done privately, and often in bed. ”

Дэниэл Бурстин (1914–2004)

Related topics