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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul Klee
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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
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Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.
Paul Klee
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He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.
Paul Klee
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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
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Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
Paul Klee
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Nothing can be rushed. It must grow, it should grow of itself, and if the time ever comes for that work, then so much the better!
Paul Klee
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My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
Paul Klee
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Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that there, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly.
Paul Klee
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You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
Paul Klee
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I paint in order not to cry.
Paul Klee
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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
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Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
Paul Klee
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Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.
Paul Klee
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A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
Paul Klee
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Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.
Paul Klee
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I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.
Paul Klee
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Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.
Paul Klee
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Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.
Paul Klee
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Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.
Paul Klee
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Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.
Paul Klee
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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
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Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.
Paul Klee
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It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.
Paul Klee
