Pau Klee: The Thinking Eye

Paul Klee's article was a little far fetched for me, and actually made it difficult for me to read and interpret. The whole idea of the difference between a point, a line, and a plane, and how it had to deal with tension between two of them did not really make sense to me. I just felt like that idea was a little bit too abstract for me to really wrap my head around. Even though I didn't agree with some of his comments about lines and planes, I did agree with some of them.
   One of Klee's points that I thought was very interesting was the one he makes about a free line. He says a free line is just a line that goes everywhere, one that really has no place it is going. I really loved the metaphor he used about a free line, "it goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly for the sake of the walk." I thought this comparison was spot one, because when I look at a line that is really how it looks to me, that it just went out for a random walk for no apparent reason. Another point that I really liked in this piece is when he explains what an Active Line looks like. How he says that with each stop a long the ay the line is just itching to get to the next point. I think this is a really could analyze of what this kid of line looks like and how it makes you feel when you look at it.

  Klee's next point is the one that I do not really seem to understand or agree with. This is when he says that linear tension is discharged between two lines to create a plane. I could see how someone could think this, but I just think that this idea is too abstract and out of the box to be considered correct. Klee then begins to indulge in what a shaded in shape really is. He shows that in reality it is just a bunch of lines extremely close together. How could I not agree to that? That point makes complete logical sense, unlike his point about tension.
   Lastly, I didn't completely understand the differences between why different shapes and lines were passive, middle, or active. The only thing that I really got from it was the tow of the pictures were flipped when one was linear and one was planar.
  I thought that this was a pretty good article overall, I liked a lot of the comparisons and metaphors he used to describe lines. It just made me frustrated that I could not really get some of the biggest concepts in the article.