Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
Paul KleeRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
In challenging times, art tends to become more conceptual and abstract, while happier times inspire more immediate and realistic expressions in art.
Paul Klee's quote suggests that the state of the world influences artistic expression. During difficult and tumultuous periods, artists often turn to abstraction, reflecting complex emotions and societal struggles, whereas in happier and more stable times, art tends to focus on the tangible and immediate experiences of life. This relationship between art and the context of existence highlights how external circumstances can shape creativity and inspiration.
Themes
ArtAbstractionEmotionWorldExpression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a lecture on the evolution of art during historic crises.
More from Paul Klee
All quotes βThe painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul KleeRead
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
Paul KleeRead
You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
Paul KleeRead
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
Paul KleeRead
All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
Paul KleeRead
Similar quotes
Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own.
Leo TolstoyRead
The core of my writing is not art but truth.
Philip K. DickRead
I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.
E. L. DoctorowRead
Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do.
Dave GrohlRead
To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it
Donald HallRead
It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
James JoyceRead