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Paul Klee Quotes
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To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
Paul Klee
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Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.
Paul Klee
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The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.
Paul Klee
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The evening is deep inside me forever. Many a blond, northern moonrise, like a muted reflection, will softly remind me and remind me again and again. It will be my bride, my alter ego. An incentive to find myself. I myself am the moonrise of the south.
Paul Klee
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It is a great difficulty and great necessity to have to start with the smallest. I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing, about Europe; ignoring poets and fashions, to be almost primitive. Then I want to do something very modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil; will be able to hold without any technique. One favorable moment is enough. The little thing is easily and concisely set down. It's already done! It was a tiny but real affair, and someday, through the repetition of such small but original deeds, there will come one work upon which I can really build.
Paul Klee
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Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.
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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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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He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i. e., cannot do something else.
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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Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
Paul Klee
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The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles).
Paul Klee
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I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
Paul Klee
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But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression. For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life..
Paul Klee
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When in Italy [Klee stayed in Italy, in 1901], I learned to understand architectural monuments... Even the dullest will understand that the obvious commensurability of parts, to each other and to the whole, corresponds to the hidden numerical proportions that exist in other artificial and natural organisms. It is clear that these figures are not cold and dead, but full of the breath of life; and the importance of measurements as an aid to study and creation becomes evident.
Paul Klee
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I have a feeling that sooner or later I shall arrive at something legitimate, only I must begin, not with hypotheses, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. If I then succeed in distinguishing a clear structure, I get more from it than from a lofty imaginary construction. And the typical will automatically follow from a series of examples.
Paul Klee
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It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.
Paul Klee
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Be winged arrows, aiming at fulfillment and goal, even though you will tire without having reached the mark.
Paul Klee
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Paul Klee
Creative Commons
Born:
December 18, 1879
Died:
June 29, 1940
(aged 60)
Bio:
Paul Klee was a Swiss-German painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.
Known for:
Angelus Novus (1920)
Twittering Machine (1922)
Cat and Bird (1928)
Fish Magic (1925)
Senecio (1922)
Most used words:
art
time
visible
life
construct
pictorial
nature
beautiful
meaning
color
work
artist
point
music
beauty
Paul Klee on Wikipedia
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