Paul Klee Quotes

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible.

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

I see things like they've never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

What is art but a way of seeing?

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips, teaches us to perceive reality differently.

That's really the whole point of art - it's to take something commonplace and draw people on a path so that, all of a sudden, they have a new impression of everything around them.