"Our initial perplexity before nature is explained by our seeing at first the small outer branches and not penetrating to the main branches or the trunk. But once this is realized, one will perceive a repetition of the whole law even in the outermost leaf and turn it to good use." (Paul Klee, [diary entry] 1904)
"When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed." (Paul Klee, [diary entry] 1904)
"The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it." (Paul Klee, [diary entry] 1905)
"Things are not quite so simple with 'pure' art as it is dogmatically claimed. In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. In this sense I shall never be a pure artist as the dogma defines him. We higher creatures are also mechanically produced children of God, and yet intellect and soul operate within us in completely different dimensions." (Paul Klee, [diary entry] 1905)
"Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail." Paul Klee, [diary entry] 1909)
"First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations." (Paul Klee, cca. 1910
"Graphic work as the expressive movement of the hand holding the recording pencil.... is so fundamentally different from dealing with tone and color that one can use this technique quite well in the dark, even in the blackest night. On the other hand, tone (movement from light to dark) presupposes some light, and color presupposes a great deal of light." (Paul Klee, 1912)
"We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole [...]. But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X." (Paul Klee, "Statement of 1917"
"A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision." (Paul Klee, "Creative Credo", 1920)
"Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental." (Paul Klee, "Creative Credo", 1920)
"For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space." (Paul Klee, 1923)
"It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations." (Paul Klee, cca. 1925)
"Thought is the medially between earth and world. The broader the magnitude of his reach, the more painful man's tragic limitation. Thought is the medially between earth and world. The broader the magnitude of his reach, the more painful man's tragic limitation. To get where motion is interminate." ( Paul Klee, "Pedagogical Sketch Book, 1925)
"The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment." (Paul Klee, "Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art", 1927)
"What had already been done for music by the end of the eighteenth century has at last been begun for the pictorial arts. Mathematics and physics furnished the means in the form of rules to be followed and to be broken. In the beginning it is wholesome to be concerned with the functions and to disregard the finished form. Studies in algebra, in geometry, in mechanics characterize teaching directed towards the essential and the functional, in contrast to apparent. One learns to look behind the façade, to grasp the root of things. One learns to recognize the undercurrents, the antecedents of the visible. One learns to dig down, to uncover, to find the cause, to analyze." (Paul Klee, "Bauhaus prospectus", 1929)
"Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view." (Paul Klee)
"It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions." (Paul Klee)
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