Paul Klee Quotes - Page 4

Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer.

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

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.

Color and I are one. I am a painter.

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.

I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.

The Biblical story of the creation is an excellent parable of movement. The work of art, too, is above all a process of creation, it is never experienced as a mere product.

All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either.

The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles).

The creation of a work of art must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied by distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn.

What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.

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.

By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.

We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing.

When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe.

Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

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.

The beholder's eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture.

Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want to climb a few steps, but really climb them.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.

I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.