Klee's Mirror

A philosophical perspective on the relation between Paul Klee’s art and his thought.

The artist Paul Klee once said that "art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible." In Klee’s Mirror John Sallis examines the various ways in which Klee’s art makes visible things that ordinarily go unseen. He shows how Klee’s art is like a mirror capable of reflecting not only the surface appearance of things, but also their hidden depth and the cosmic setting to which they belong. Tracing the relation of Klee’s paintings and drawings to music, poetry, and philosophy, Sallis also takes account of Klee’s own extensive writings, both theoretical and autobiographical, and of the incisive lectures that he presented while teaching at the Bauhaus. Featuring large, high-quality reproductions, Klee’s Mirror shows how the painter’s theories both are exemplified in his art and, in turn, are enhanced and extended by what his art achieves and reveals.