Paul Klee in the Wizard's Kitchen

Art has its own reality; it does not exist, as we know it, in a mental form prior to its physical manifestation, nor does it bear a direct relationship to either inner or outer realities. Although an individual painting or drawing may appear to represent the outer world of physical reality or the inner world of the imagination, art is more complex than what our immediate experience may lead us to believe. For example, a picture painted or drawn in a manner described as “realism” seems to resemble, to our perception, the outer world, while expressionistic, surreal and abstract modes of art tend to be associated with an artist's expression of his individual psychic reality. However, within a work of art, inner and outer realities exist in a dialectical relationship as “a coexistence of irresolvably different elements that have entered into a relationship of evolving, mutually enriching negations of one another” (Ogden, 1989a, p. xi). Furthermore, the emergence of a work of art as its final form is unpredictable because the manipulation of physical materials intervenes between the artist's original idea (which is altered as he paints or draws) and the completed work. A work of art has a life of its own; it is its own reality.

Unlike the progression of knowledge in science, progress as such does not exist in art. For this discussion, I refer to those arts (primarily painting, drawing, and printmaking) practiced by Paul Klee (). While there is progress in the technical aspects of making art, such as the discovery of new materials or methods, the development of formal ideas in art over time (for