The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul KleeRead
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.
Interpretation
The essence of life and existence is spiritual and eternal, while everything else is temporary.
This quote by Paul Klee emphasizes the transient nature of life and the material world, suggesting that what truly endures and holds significance is our spiritual essence and the deeper truths that govern existence. Klee points out that despite the constant changes that life brings, the absolute truths of our spiritual experiences remain unchanged and are what we carry forward.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a reflection on life during a meditation session.
The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
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.
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.
Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.
People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
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