Paul Klee Eye Quotations

The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles).

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.

From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.

The beholder's eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture.

See with one eye, feel with the other.

My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

One eye sees, the other feels.