This short discussion of modern art is interesting, not only because it is by a modern master, Paul Klee, but also because it explores the artistic process rather than the outcome. Often a book on modern art will look at the products, the art pieces themselves, from the perspective of the non-artist critic who then groups works together into arbitrary categories. Klee, however, focused on "throwing some light on those elements of the creative process which, during the growth of a work of art, take place in the subconscious."
The text was originally a lecture in Klee's native German, ably translated by Herbert Reed and laid out as an essay. Reed follows the original intent of Klee's lecture, which would have taken place in a room surrounded by his works, and supplies one of the artist's drawings on the left of every page.
Klee says the modern artist is like a tree - the artist's perception of the world around them is like the roots of the tree, supplying the sap or "passing stream of image and experience" to the trunk which is the artist himself, from which "the crown of the tree unfolds and spreads in time and space, so with his work." The simile works well since, as Klee explains, the roots and crown of the tree are not reflections of each other so it follows that modern art does not mirror the real world. Klee notes that the artist "does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths . . . . He is merely a channel."
Klee goes on to discuss the different dimensions present simultaneously in art, which are not easily represented with language. He talks about the "formal factors, such as line, tone value and colour," then the "dimension of figure," then "content," and finally "combination." Klee also gives a convincing argument for why modern artists' works often diverge so completely from their inspiration:
he does not attach such intense importance to natural form as do so many realist critics, because ... these final forms are not the real stuff of the process of natural creation. For he places more value on the powers which do the forming than on the final forms themselves.
Klee concludes that the artist is a type of philosopher or, more common today, a quantum physicist, who looks at the world around him and is able to say "in its present shape it is not the only possible world." That is why the artist can take inspiration from something simple, like swimming fish, and create something reminiscent but wholly different, like the Klee cover. The artist is able to look at all of the possible realms of form and represent them in his own way, free from the constraints of physicality.