Painters [*/ ) Notebooks | Paul Klee, 1898-1918

“In our dreams moment of our life often recur which have surprised us and made us momentarily helpless. The are mostly trifling occurrences. The great impression of times when one has exercised self-control remain a distance.”

“For these are primitive beginning 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 the must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.”

“Actually, the main thing now is not to paint precociously to be or, at least, to 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. Not only to master life in practice, but to shape it meaningfully within me and to achieve as mature an attitude before it as possible. Obviously this isn’t accomplished with a few general precepts but grows like Nature.”

“Now the country is becoming flatter, the first windmills appear, and there are signs of a large city soon to come (Hanover.) Like a dream, the great city floats by in the haze, beyond the flooded area/ A boastful dome with a gilded knob at the entrance of town and, finally, an old, three-pointed church steeple. In the foreground, a hellish industrial section. Great waste of space everywhere, as also in the installations of the freight station at Seelze.”