Paul Klee (1879 – 1940)
Swiss painter of German nationality.
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.
We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing.
My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!
Klee's idiosyncracies always remained somewhat beyond the law, as it were. For "genius is the defect in the system," stated the conscientious system builder, who knew that genius was the only thing that could neither be taught nor learned.
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.
Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.