"In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better"
About this Quote
Klee treats the page like a launchpad: the moment a drawing is truly finished, it stops being a picture of something and becomes a device for thinking. “No longer a drawing” is a deliberately slippery demotion of the medium’s old job - describing the visible world - in favor of a new one: mapping what can’t be straightforwardly seen. Even “self-sufficient execution,” that Modernist badge of honor, isn’t enough for him. Craft alone can seal a work shut, impressive but inert. Klee wants permeability.
The key move is his quasi-scientific metaphor: “imaginary lines of projection.” He borrows the language of geometry and perspective, then smuggles in metaphysics. Projection suggests an artwork that doesn’t sit flat; it casts structure outward, implying depth, time, mood, memory, spiritual charge. The “higher dimensions” aren’t math homework so much as a refusal of literalism: drawing as a way to model inner experience, or the unseen rules behind nature’s surfaces.
Context matters. Klee, a Bauhaus-era artist and teacher, lived amid a culture intoxicated by new systems: modern physics, abstract painting, design rationalism. His sentence both nods to that appetite for diagrams and resists its dryness. The subtext is quietly insurgent: the best drawing isn’t the one that proves its autonomy, but the one that opens a portal - not to escape reality, but to expand what reality is allowed to include.
The key move is his quasi-scientific metaphor: “imaginary lines of projection.” He borrows the language of geometry and perspective, then smuggles in metaphysics. Projection suggests an artwork that doesn’t sit flat; it casts structure outward, implying depth, time, mood, memory, spiritual charge. The “higher dimensions” aren’t math homework so much as a refusal of literalism: drawing as a way to model inner experience, or the unseen rules behind nature’s surfaces.
Context matters. Klee, a Bauhaus-era artist and teacher, lived amid a culture intoxicated by new systems: modern physics, abstract painting, design rationalism. His sentence both nods to that appetite for diagrams and resists its dryness. The subtext is quietly insurgent: the best drawing isn’t the one that proves its autonomy, but the one that opens a portal - not to escape reality, but to expand what reality is allowed to include.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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