Paul Klee Quotes
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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
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Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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I paint in order not to cry.
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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.
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My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
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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.
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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.
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You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
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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.
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A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
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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.
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Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.
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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.
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It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.
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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.
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Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.
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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.
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Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.
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I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.
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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.