The Notebooks of Paul Klee, vol. 1: The Thinking Eye

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Jürg Spiller Editor

Wittenborn, New York, 1961, English; originally published 1956 (in German)

Nonfiction, Art and Cultural History

The two volumes of the notebooks of the artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) contain the majority of the material used for his Bauhaus school lectures on art and the creative process and include drawings, notes, and illustrations. (Volume 2 is entitled The Nature of Nature.) Volumes 1 and 2 were reissued as a set by Overlook Press in 1992.

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Richard Saul Wurman

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There have been five moments in my life that were akin to having the switch turned on in a dark room. I will list these five and then expand upon the first, which allowed for the rest to occur. 1. Reading The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature (then published by George Wittenborn). Klee’s writings confirmed or awakened what I already knew: there exists a systemic reason or basis for visual language, color, line, area, intensity, and repetition; and the boundaries between painting, illustration, narrative, and language are blurred. . . . View the complete text

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