Paul Klee Quotes - Page 2

Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.

...A long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

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.

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.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.

My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

Make chance essential.

See with one eye, feel with the other.

Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.

It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.

Genius is the error in the system.

For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind

I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough.

One day I will lie nowhere with an angel at my side.

It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing; becoming is more important than being.

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.

A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.

It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.

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.

Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?

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.