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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.
Paul Klee -
There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.
Paul Klee
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All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
Paul Klee -
I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers.
Paul Klee -
Genius is the error in the system.
Paul Klee -
I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe.
Paul Klee -
Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.
Paul Klee -
Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord.
Paul Klee
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In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.
Paul Klee -
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 -
Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.
Paul Klee -
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
Paul Klee -
A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.
Paul Klee -
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.
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 -
Color and I are one. I am a painter.
Paul Klee -
Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.
Paul Klee -
The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.
Paul Klee -
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.
Paul Klee -
Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.
Paul Klee