Paul Klee on nature

The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.

The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

Every day, man is making bigger and better fool-proof things, and every day, nature is making bigger and better fools. So far, I think nature is winning.

Albert Einstein1879–1955

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, Book I, 1253a.8

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Baltasar Gracián1601–1658

• Art