Painters From Switzerland

"Intellectual genius should not be confused with the mental acuity of logicians: intellectual intuition comprises in its essence a contemplativity that is in no way part of the rational capacity, this capacity being logical rather than contemplative; now it is contemplative power, receptivity toward the uncreated Light, the opening of the Eye of the heart, which distinguishes transcendent intelligence from reason."

"Whereas metaphysics proceeds wholly from intellectual intuition, religion proceeds from Revelation. The latter is the Word of God spoken to His creatures, whereas intellectual intuition is a direct and active participation in divine Knowledge and not an indirect and passive participation, as is faith. In other words, in the case of intellectual intuition, knowledge is not possessed by the individual insofar as he is an individual, but insofar as in his innermost essence he is not distinct from his Divine Principle. Thus metaphysical certitude is absolute because of the identity between the knower and the known in the Intellect."

"Direct and supra-mental intellection is in reality a "remembering" and not an "acquisition": intelligence in this realm does not take cognizance of something located in principle outside itself, but all possible knowledge is on the contrary contained in the luminous substance of the Intellect − which is identified with the Logos by "filiation of essence" − so that the "remembering" is nothing other than an actualization, thanks to an occasional external cause or an internal inspiration, of a given eternal potentiality of the intellective substance."

"If every man possessed intellect, not merely in a fragmentary or virtual state, but as a fully developed faculty, there would be no Revelations, because total intellection would be a natural thing; but as this has not been so since the end of the Golden Age, Revelation is not only necessary, but even normative with regard to individual intellection, or rather with regard to its formal expression. No intellectuality is possible outside a revealed mode of expression, a scriptural or oral tradition, although intellection can occur, as an isolated miracle, wherever the intellective faculty exists; but an intellection outside tradition will have neither authority nor efficacy. Intellection has need of occasional causes in order to become fully aware of itself and exercised without constraints; therefore in milieus that are practically speaking deprived of Revelation − or forgetful of the sapiential meanings of the revealed Word − intellectuality generally exists only in a latent state; even where it is still affirmed despite everything, perceived truths are made inoperative by their overly fragmentary character and by the mental chaos which surrounds them. For the intellect, Revelation is like a principle of actualization, expression and control; in practice the revealed "letter" is indispensable in intellectual life."

"The word "God" does not and cannot admit of any restriction, for the simple reason that God is "all that is purely principial", hence also − and a fortiori − "Beyond-Being"; one may not know this or may deny it, but it cannot be denied that God is "That which is supreme", hence That which nothing can surpass."

"There are three great theophanies, or three hypostases, which are, in descending order: firstly, Beyond-Being or the Self, Absolute Reality, Âtmâ; secondly, Being or the Lord, who creates, reveals and judges; and thirdly, the manifested Divine Spirit, which Itself possesses three modes: the universal or archangelic Intellect, the Man-Logos, who reveals in a human language, and the Intellect in ourselves, which is "neither created or uncreated", and which confers upon the human species its central, axial and "pontifical" rank, one which is virtually divine with regard to other creatures."

"Some will no doubt point out that Buddhism proves that the notion of God has nothing fundamental about it and that one can very well dispense with it in both metaphysics and spirituality; they would be right if Buddhists did not possess the idea of the Absolute or of transcendence, or of immanent Justice with its complement, Mercy; this is all that is needed to show that Buddhism, though it does not possess the word − or not our word − nonetheless possesses the reality itself."

"Divine anthropomorphism responds to human theomorphism: if God can manifest Himself in human modalities, it is because man is "made in the image of God", and this is the very reason for man’s existence and for the cosmic miracle that he is."

"To say that God is "unknowable" is, on the one hand simply a manner of speaking which intends to emphasize that reason is limited in principle, and on the other hand that the intellect, accidentally obscured, is limited in fact. To possess total Knowledge is to be possessed by it: it is to be a "knower by God" (ʿārif bi ʾLlāh), in the sense that God reveals Himself to the extent that He is, in us, both the Subject and the Object of Knowledge."

"Certainly, God is ineffable, nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words; but on the other hand, truth exists, that is to say that there are conceptual points of reference which provide a sufficient expression of the nature of God; otherwise our intelligence would not be human, which amounts to saying that it would not exist, or simply that it would be inoperative with respect to what constitutes the reason for man’s existence. God is both unknowable and knowable, a paradox which implies − on pain of absurdity − that the relationships are different, first of all on the plane of mere thought and then in virtue of everything that separates mental knowledge from that of the heart; the first is a "perceiving", and the second a "being". "The soul is all that which it knows", said Aristotle; one must add that the soul is able to know all that which it is; and that in its essence it is none other than That which is, and That which alone is."

"In pure theosophy there is no question of wishing to remove from God His mysteries by means of unveilings and specifications; for however acute our discernments, the divine mystery remains complete by reason of the Infinitude of the Real."

"The man who rejects religion because, when taken literally, it sometimes seems absurd − since truths have to be selectively chosen and parceled out in a manner required by the formal crystallization and by the adaptation to an intellectually minimal collective mentality − such a man overlooks one essential thing, despite the logic of his reaction: namely, that the imagery, contradictory though it may be at first sight, nonetheless conveys information that in the final analysis is coherent and even dazzlingly evident for those who are capable of having a presentiment of it or of grasping it. It is true that there is, a priori, a contradiction between an omniscient, omnipotent, and infinitely good God who created man without foreseeing the fall; who grants him too great a freedom with respect to his intelligence, or too small an intelligence in proportion to his freedom; who finds no other means of saving man than to sacrifice His own Son, and doing so without the immense majority of men being informed of this − and being able to be informed of it in time − when in fact this information is the conditio sine qua non of salvation; who after having powerfully revealed that He is One, waits for centuries before revealing that He is Three; who condemns man to an eternal hell for temporal faults; a God who on the one hand "wants" man not to sin, and on the other "wills" that a particular sin be committed, or who predestines man to a particular sin, on the one hand, and, on the other, punishes him for having committed it; or again, a God who gives us intelligence and then forbids us to use it, as practically every fideism would have it; and so on. But whatever may be the contradiction between an omniscient and omnipotent God and the actions attributed to Him by scriptural symbolism and anthropomorphist, voluntaristic, and sentimental theology, there is, beyond all this imagery − whose contradictions are perfectly resolvable in metaphysics − an Intelligence, or a Power, which is fundamentally good and which − with or without predestination − is disposed to saving us from a de facto distress, on the sole condition that we resign ourselves to following its call; and this reality is a "categorical imperative" which is so to speak in the air we breathe and independent of all requirements of logic and all need for coherence."

"When God is absent, pride fills the void."

"In the spiritual order a proof is of assistance only to the man who wishes to understand and who, because of this wish, has in some measure understood already; it is of no practical use to one who, deep in his heart, does not want to change his position and whose philosophy merely expresses this desire."

"There is nothing more contradictory than a cerebral intelligence opposing itself to cardiac intelligence, whether it be to deny the possibility of knowledge or to deny the ultimate Knower: how can one not feel instinctively, "viscerally", existentially, that one cannot be intelligent, even very relatively so, without an Intelligence "in itself" that is both transcendent and immanent, and not grasp that subjectivity by itself is an immediate and quasi-fulgurating proof of the Omniscient, a proof almost too blindingly evident to be able to be formulated in words?"

"The fundamental solution to the problem of the credibility of religious axioms, and consequently the quintessence of the proofs of God, lies in the ontological correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, that is, in the fact that the microcosm has to mirror the macrocosm; in other words, the subjective dimension, taken in its totality, coincides with the objective dimension, from which the religious and metaphysical truths derive in the first place. What matters is to actualize this coincidence, and this is what Revelation does, in principle or de facto, by awakening, if not always direct intellection, at least the indirect intellection which is faith; credo ut intelligam."

"If we must love God, and love him more than ourselves and our neighbor, it is because love exists before us and because we are issued from it; we love by virtue of our very existence."

"To love God does not mean to cultivate a sentiment − that is to say, something we enjoy without knowing whether God enjoys it − but to eliminate from the soul what prevents God from entering it."

"Love of God is firstly the attachment of the intelligence to the Truth, then the attachment of the will to the Good, and finally the attachment of the soul to the Peace that is given by the Truth and the Good."

"One cannot love God without fearing him, any more than one can love one's neighbor without respecting him; not to fear God is to prevent Him showing mercy."

"To fear God is first of all to see, on the level of action, consequences in causes, sanction in sin, suffering in error; to love God is first to choose God, that is to say, to prefer what brings one nearer Him over what estranges from Him."

"Without fear of God as a basis, nothing is possible spiritually, for the absence of fear is a lack of self-knowledge."

"The fear of God is not in any way a matter of feeling any more than is the love of God; like love, which is the tendency of our whole being toward transcendent Reality, fear is an attitude of the intelligence and the will: it consists in taking account at every moment of a Reality which infinitely surpasses us, against which we can do nothing, in opposition to which we could not live, and from the teeth of which we cannot escape."

"Love of God is something universal: the term "love" designates not only a path depending on will and feeling, but also − and this is its broadest meaning − every path insofar as it attaches us to the Divine; "love" is everything which makes us prefer God to the world and contemplation to earthly activity, wherever this alternative has a meaning. The best love will be, not that which most resembles what the word "love" can evoke in us a priori, but that which will attach us most steadfastly or most profoundly to Reality; to love God is to keep oneself near to Him, in the midst of the world just as beyond the world; God wants our souls, whatever may be our attitudes or our methods."

"Beauty, whatever use man may make of it, belongs fundamentally to its Creator, who through it projects into the world of appearances something of His being."

"At the moment, an unpleasant feeling presses on my stomach, as though the new year of the unified, national Germany has assisted in the advent of an all too torch-parade-like sparkling wine bacchanal."

"I'll provide it if I'm officially asked to do so but it's below my dignity to initiate action against such primitive accusations. For even if I were a Jew, and did come from Galicia, this would alter neither my own worth nor that of my work one iota. My personal point of view is that a Jew and a foreigner is of no less intrinsic value than a German and a native, and I must not abandon it of my own accord, for if I did I would appear to posterity in an absurd light. I would rather cause myself trouble than become the tragicomic figure of one striving for the favour of those in power."

"Since not even sufficient time for my main business remains to me. Production is taking a larger magnitude at a faster tempo, and can no longer wholly keep up with these children. They [very probably: his new art] issue forth."

"Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view."

"Kandinsky and Klee: the two artists.. ..have been named together more and more frequently.. .Since: is it supposed to be a mere coincidence that, in quiet, remote Dessau.. ..two creative spirits equally liberated from the burden of earthly problems – connecting East and West – live under one roof, or is it a wake-up call, a sign of what is to come?!"

"At the Bauhaus, Klee exuded a healthy, generative atmosphere – as a great artist and as a lucid, pure human being."

"Then that great fellow Klee comes onto the scene, already famed as a Bauhaus teacher in Dessau. He tells everyone he's a thoroughbred Arab, but he's a typical Galician Jew."

"It would be so nice to once again drink a cup of tea with you, as was so often and so pleasantly the case in Dessau. We frequently think of our former closeness, of watering flowers at the same time, of the bocce[?] battles and – sad thought – of our collective complaints about the BH Bauhaus meetings [until 1933]. How far behind us all of that is!"

"Alors sempre avanti! (Ever Forward / Always Ahead)"

"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."

"The reader of the four 'Diaries' of Paul Klee.. ..will be initiated – being presumably an outsider – into a mysterious, rare, individual, and watchful world, that of Paul Klee the 'painter'. Indeed, the entries in his diaries were not originally intended for publication, but merely for his own reflection. During his lifetime my father allowed no one, not even myself, access to his most personal confession."

"But Paul Klee and Franz Marc were also close friends, and August Macke, too, whenever he was in Munich.. .Klee was never as active a theorist, in those years, as Kandinsky or Marianne de Werefkin. Besides, it took Klee much longer to become a truly and conscious modern artist.. .As you can see in my portrait of Klee, which is painted in 1913 – I mean the one where he is seen seated in one of the rooms here downstairs and wearing white summer slacks – he is not very communicative. That is why I depicted him all hunched up and tense, as if he were constraining some mainspring within himself. In my eyes, it was almost a portrait of silence rather than of Klee, and for many years it no longer occurred to me that he had been my model. But Klee was always a close friend of ours, and Kandinsky and I had great confidence in his talent and his future... (1958)"

"The students' relationship to Kandinsky was very respectful.. .What he said was always insightful and more or less documented. In the case of Klee, in contrast, everything was always up in the air. You could make what you wanted of it."

"Klee was my so-called form master [at the Bauhaus, where a. o. Kandinsky, Klee - and later Albers himself - were art teachers]. In the workshops there they had a crafts master and a form master. The crafts master had to direct the practical work, the mechanics of the workshop. And the form master had to develop the, formal qualities. Klee was my form master in the glass workshop. He came to me and never criticized anything. He talked about something else. Never asked about any form problem with the windows I was working on. Never a word. He was too respectful. He was the nicest master I could ask for. He talked about exhibitions. He thought I should exhibit. That's another story. We had a good relationship because we never dealt with the same problems. He didn't attack our problems. He never brought up a problem."

"Klee's idiosyncracies always remained somewhat beyond the law, as it were. For 'genius is the defect in the system,' stated the conscientious system builder, who knew that genius was the only thing that could neither be taught nor learned."

"At a certain point in the 1950's he [Klee] had an enormous influence on many artists, including me. It wasn't until about 1965 that he started to slip out of sight - and after that one just didn't hear about him."

"In any painting or drawing by Klee the working method was broadly the same. He started every picture with an abstract mark - a square, a triangle, a circle, a line or a dot - and then allowed that motif to evolve or grow, almost like a living organism. Klee's control over whatever medium he is using is never less than masterful, but you always sense that he began not knowing where it would lead."

"It is typical for Klee that he often brought joyful, sympathetic, childlike angels with small weaknesses on paper in spite of his death warnings. There are no bleak or discouraged works, but extremely smart and witty angels."

"Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured.Tone value is primarily Weight, but in its extent and its boundaries, it is also Measure.Line, however, is solely Measure."

"For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space."

"Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental."

"The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles)."

"A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision."

"I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. The end has met the beginning."

"I can dimly recollect Kandinsky and Weisgerber, who were fellow students of mine.. .Kandinsky was quiet and mixed the colours on his palette with the greatest diligence and, so it seemed to me, with a kind of studiousness, peering very closely at what he was doing."