“I had the feeling that another kind of life -- perhaps in a transcendental area -- would give me a better possibility to influence, or to work, or to act within this contradiction. So, this was my general feeling: on the one side, this beautiful undamaged nature form which I took a lot and had a lot of possibilities for contemplation, meditation, research, collecting things, making a kind of system; and on the other side, this social debacle that I felt already as a coming dilemma.”

—  Joseph Beuys

Source: 1980's, Interview with Kate Horsefield, 1980, p. 62; also quoted in: Video Data Bank, School/Art Institute Chicago, (1981) Profile, Volume 1

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Joseph Beuys 50
German visual artist 1921–1986

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