"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from GermanyPrintmakersAcademics from SwitzerlandPainters from GermanyPainters from Switzerland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Quote of Walter Benjamin, in Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Klee
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"The more horrible this world (as today, for instance) [first year of World War 1.], the more abstract our art, wherea…"
"Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that …"
"The conviction that painting is the right profession grows stronger and stronger in me. Writing is the only other thi…"
"As time passes I become more and more afraid of my growing love of music. I don’t understand myself. I play solo sona…"
"You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I wo…"
"Music, for me, is a love bewitched. / Fame as a painter? / Writer, modern poet? Bad joke. / So I have no calling, and…"
"The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles)."
"Twenty-one years old! I never doubted my vital force. But how is it to fare with my chosen art? The recognition that …"
"To be a student of Stuck [1898 - 1900] sounded good. In reality, however, it was not half so splendid. Instead of com…"
"..I served Beauty by drawing her enemies."