„Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.“
Schöpferische Konfession. In: Tribüne der Kunst und der Zeit. Eine Schriftensammlung, Band XIII, hgg. v. Kasimir Edschmid. Reiß, Berlin 1920. S. 28
Zitate von Paul Klee
3 1
Paul Klee
Geburtstag: 18. Dezember 1879
Todesdatum: 29. Juni 1940
Paul Ernst Klee war ein deutscher Maler und Grafiker, dessen vielseitiges Werk dem Expressionismus, Konstruktivismus, Kubismus, Primitivismus und dem Surrealismus zugeordnet wird. Klee stand in engem Kontakt zur Redaktionsgemeinschaft Der Blaue Reiter und zeigte auf ihrer zweiten Ausstellung 1912 grafische Arbeiten. Dem bis zu dieser Zeit hauptsächlich als Grafiker tätigen Künstler verhalf eine 1914 gemeinsam mit August Macke und Louis Moilliet durchgeführte Reise nach Tunesien zu seinem Durchbruch als Maler. Sie wurde als kunstgeschichtlich bedeutende Tunisreise bekannt.
Wie sein Freund, der russische Maler Wassily Kandinsky, lehrte Klee ab 1921 am Bauhaus in Weimar und später in Dessau. Ab 1931 war er Professor an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Nach der Machtergreifung durch die Nationalsozialisten wurde er entlassen und ging zurück nach Bern, wo während der letzten Jahre ab dem Jahr 1934 trotz wachsender Belastung durch eine schwere Krankheit ein umfangreiches Spätwerk entstand. Neben seinem künstlerischen Werk verfasste er kunsttheoretische Schriften wie beispielsweise Schöpferische Konfession und Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch . Paul Klee gehört zu den bedeutendsten bildenden Künstlern der Klassischen Moderne des 20. Jahrhunderts.
Zitate Paul Klee
„Die Musik über alles lieben, heißt unglücklich sein.“
Tagebücher 1898-1918. Hrsg. von Felix Klee. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1957. S. 71
„Die Farbe hat mich. Ich brauche nicht nach ihr zu haschen. Sie hat mich für immer. Das ist der glücklichen Stunde Sinn: ich und die Farbe sind eins. Ich bin Maler.“
Tagebücher 1898-1918. Hrsg. von Felix Klee. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1957. S. 307
„His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified.“
Quote (1908), # 816, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910
„Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1909), # 857, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 236
1903 - 1910
Kontext: 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.
„The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual.“
Diary entry (3 June 1902), # 411, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1895 - 1902
Kontext: The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
„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.“
Section V
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Kontext: 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.
„My mirror probes down to the heart.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1901), # 136, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 48
1895 - 1902
Kontext: 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.
„Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.“
Section I
(de) Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Variante: Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
„The work as human action (genesis) is productive as well as receptive. It is continuity.“
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„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. The end has met the beginning.“
German original version: Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar. Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten, wie bei den Ungeborenen. Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich. Und noch lange nicht nahe genug.
Quote from Exhibition catalogue, Galerie Goltz, Munich, published in the gallery's house journal Der Ararat (May 1920). These words were later used as Klee's epitaph in 1940.
Variant translation: I cannot be understood at all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
As quoted in Paul Klee: His Work and Thought (1991) by Marcel Franciscono, p. 5
1916 - 1920
„The work grows "stone upon stone" (additive) or
The block is hewn "chip from chip" (subtractive)
Both processes, building and reducing, are time bound.“
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.“
Diary entry (January 1912), # 905, quoting his "Munich Art Letter" in the journal Die Alpen
1911 - 1914
„The contrast between man's ideological capacity to move at random through material and metaphysical spaces and his physical limitations, is Uneven lengths and uneven angle-degrees of the point-rudder result in a deviating course. the origin of all human tragedy. It is this contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged-half imprisoned, this is man!“
IIII.37, The Arrow. p. 54
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„Formerly it frequently happened to me that when questioned regarding a picture I simply did not know what it represented. I had not seen the subject, so to say. Now I have also included the content so that I know most of the time what is represented. But this only supports my experience that what matters in the ultimate end is the abstract meaning of harmonization“
note from a letter, 1903
Quote from a letter (1903), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 443
1903 - 1910
„As time passes I become more and more afraid of my growing love of music. I don’t understand myself. I play solo sonatas by Bach: next to them, what is Böcklin? It makes me smile.“
Quote (November 1897), # 52, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
reflecting on his youth and on the uncertainty about the future of choice to make
1895 - 1902
„Towards the end of the month I prepared engravings; first, invented appropriate drawings. Not that I want to become a specialist now. But painting with its failures cries out for the relief of minor successes. Nowadays I am a very tired painter, but my skill as a draftsman holds [me] up.“
Quote (1904), # 512, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910
