“For the artist, dialogue with nature remains a conditio sine qua non. The artist is a man, himself nature and part of nature in natural space. But the ways that this man pursues both in his production and in the related study of nature may vary, both in number and in kind, according to his view of his own position in the natural space.
The ways often seem very new, though fundamentally they may not be new at all. Only their combination is new, or else they are really new in comparison with the number and character of yesterday’s ways. But to be new as against yesterday is still revolutionary, even if it does not shake the immense old world. There is no need to disparage the joy of novelty; though a clear view of history should save us from desperately searching for novelty at the cost of naturalness.”
- Paul Klee, from The Thinking Eye, The Notebooks of Paul Klee
