Paul Klee, the thinking eye

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.). "The writings which compose Paul Klee's theory of form production and pictorial form have the same importance and the same meaning for modern art as had Leonardo's writings which composed his theory of painting for Renaissance art. Like the latter, they do not constitute a true and proper treatise, that is to say a collection of stylistic and technical rules, but are the result of an introspective analysis which the artist engages in during his work and in the light of the experience of reality which comes to him in the course of his work. This analysis which accompanies and controls the formation of a work of art is a necessary component of the artistic process, the aim and the finality of which are brought to light by it . . ." So writes Giulio Carlo Argan in his Preface to this first volume of Klee's notebooks. The backbone of his Bauhaus courses was provided by the lecture notes contained in 'Contributions to a Theory of Pictorial Form' which are here published in their entirety. From more than 2,500 pages of the notebooks (consisting of memoranda, teaching projects, constructive drawings, and sketches for his pictures) it has been possible to reconstruct additional courses of instruction. Also included are the 'Creative Credo', 'Ways of Nature Study', the Jena lecture of 1924 and the essay' Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art'. The volume includes a magnificent collection of over one thousand drawings which illustrate the notes, as well as 188 half-tone illustrations, eight of these reproduced in full color.