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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.

Paul Klee

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Paul Klee
Age: 61 †
Born: 1879
Born: February 18
Died: 1940
Died: May 29
Designer
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Münchenbuchsee BE
p. klee
Klee
Paul Klee
May
Calm
Organize
Wells
Including
Construction
Cultivating
Well
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Laid
Document
Whole
Succeed
Justify
Foundations
Good
Coming
Unknown
Construct
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Virtue
Explain
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Science
Absolutes
Documents
Art
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Exact

More quotes by Paul Klee

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Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk.
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I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
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A line is a dot that went for a walk.
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The beholder's eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture.
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By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.
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The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.
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I paint in order not to cry.
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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.
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In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.
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My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
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Genius is the error in the system.
Paul Klee
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The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.
Paul Klee
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Make chance essential.
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It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.
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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.
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