MY MAGICAL ATTIC: PAUL KLEE: THE THINKING EYE

November 26, 2019

PAUL KLEE: THE THINKING EYE

PAUL KLEE: THE THINKING EYE BY GIULIO CARLO ARGAN

The writings which compose Paul Klee’s theory of form production and pictorial form have the same importance and the same meaning for modern art as had Leonardo’s writings which composed his theory of painting for Renaissance art. Like the latter, they do not constitute a true and proper treatise, that is to say, a collection of stylistic and technical rules, but are the result of an introspective analysis which the artist engages in during his work and in the light of the experience of reality which comes to him in the course of his work. This analysis which accompanies and controls the formation of a work of art is a necessary component of the artistic process, the aim and the finality of which are brought to light by it. This explains too how the experience of reality which is acquired in seeking aesthetic value is no less concrete or less conclusive than that which is acquired in scientific or philosophic research.

It is well-known that Klee, more than any other artist of our century, was consciously detached from the main stream of modern art and its theoretical assumptions. In the same way, Leonardo, more than any other artist of the Renaissance, consciously detached himself from the central features of the historical tradition. In their creative thought both Leonardo and Klee are not so much concerned with the art object, as with the manner in which it is produced. They are concerned not with form as an immutable value, but with formation as a process. Both are aware that the artist’s approach or creative manner is an independent and complete way of existing in reality and of understanding it; and as they are not unaware that there are other speculative methods, they are led to investigate that particular character which is the distinctive feature of the artistic approach, always bearing in mind, however, that this must develop over the whole field of experience. For this reason Leonardo’s mode of thought, like that of Klee, covers every aspect of being; it takes in the entire universe. Since art brings into being, albeit only through what is termed the visible, a cosmic awareness of reality, there is no moment or aspect of being which can be considered foreign or irrelevant to the experience which is acquired in artistic creation.

Historically speaking, Klee’s poetics can be linked to what might be called the poetics of contradiction, that is to say, poetics from Mallarme to Rilke. Klee was a friend of the latter; and Klee’s thoughts on art were linked by at least two sources of common interest to the poetics of Mallarm: Wagner, whom as a passionate lover of music he knew very well, and Poe, who certainly was one of the sources of his pictorial inspiration.

The fundamental themes are always those of non-positivity, of elusiveness, of the uncertainty of existence, of the emptiness of reality, and the need to fill that void by human endeavour and artistic creation. Nor are these born of an imperious creative will, but of the contradiction which exists between an understanding of the anguished uncertainty of everything and our indestructible awareness of existing, and of existing by necessity in one time, in one space, and in one world.

Everything that we know of reality (and this reality includes ourselves, the clear world of our consciousness and that murky and crepuscular world of the unconscious) comes to us through this tormented paradox. Nor is it a single and grandiose image which imposes itself on us by the logical system of its eternal values, but a hasty sequence of images, often dissociated and enigmatic, and always fragmentary throughout the full cycle of our existence. In turn, our existence is no more in its time-space reality than that self-same succession of images: and there is no moment of our existence which is not an experience of reality. These ambiguous images, then, are formed by ourselves. It is almost as if we evoke them from the darkness of a lost dimension, and reanimate them by the rhythm of our actions, giving them meaning and form. For the threat does not come from the vitality of the unconscious, but on the contrary, from carrying within us something, that is dead, which, being corrupted, corrupts us. This endeavour, therefore, and this , endeavour alone, is the subject of a speculation on art.

Perhaps, like Mallarme, Klee too dreamt of the absolute work of art, ’l’oeuvre’, and did not achieve it; his real work must be found in the mass of evidence testifying to his life of research, in his development by way of a vast number of fragments, in his rapid sequence of paintings, in page after page of sketches and notes, in the restless technical experiments (since every technique is an attempt at ‘trying’, a ‘coup de des’ that may even succeed in eliminating ’le hasard’).

The writings which compose Klee’s theory of form are, in fact, an attempt to fix the moments of that unaccomplished creative work, which unwinds with the devouring rapidity of time; to give meaning to arbitrary images, releasing them from the changeability of events and from shapelessness. These writings, therefore, more than any commentary, are a live and necessary part of the artist’s ceuvre . Since they cannot be separated from the drawings which accompany them they cannot be separated either from his other pictorial and graphic works, from the various planes on which his works were being simultaneously developed, from the inevitable irregularity of his progress or from the coherence, no less severe for being full of the unexpected, of his intellectual adventure. Klee’s poetics, however, have this special quality, that in a large measure they are born and are formulated as didactics, like a well-prepared course of teaching given in a school with syllabuses and purposes precisely defined, as was the Bauhaus of Weimar and of Dessau. Of all the artists of this century, Klee is perhaps the one who has most purposefully penetrated into the enchanted realm of fantasy. It is as if he were seeking, whilst exploring the unconscious, the manifestation of an absolutely authentic and unique experience in which he would find himself alone in the suffering of the lonely ego, even reaching out to that ultimate and finally truthful manifestation of the ego which only comes to us at the moment of death. It cannot therefore be wondered at that his most constant preoccupation was to be able to communicate his own experience so that it could be repeatable and ‘utilisable’ and finally productive. Nor is this all: this man who looks upon nothingness with such a candid and dauntless eye, who ‘toys' with death like Schiller’s artist ’toys’ with life, employs his own poetics and his own didactics in a school which not only has a social and somewhat revolutionary syllabus, and sees In technology the new strict spirituality of the modern world, but proposes to intervene effectually in the existing state of affairs by forming a class of technical executives and planners capable of solving problems arising from industrial production and capitalist economy.

Klee always wanted to teach and he dedicated himself to the school with an almost apostolic fervour. Conscious that art should be a means of human communication, he saw in teaching, in the exactness of the didactic method, a strict means of human communication. It is a matter of teaching others how to walk along thin invisible wires, stretched out in the darkness, trying to penetrate an unknown dimension. There can be no other way than that of going forward together along the uncertain road. There is the need not to be alone, to hold hands, to make a human chain: this is still the human basis, sentimental perhaps, of Klee’s didactics.

But other and more serious reasons impel his poetics to become didactic and to assume a methodological character. According to Klee, the manner in which the artist creates implies, above all, a didactic requirement, for it is through creation that the artist learns to recognise the world in which he exists and acts, shaping it according to the extent of his own experience. Reading the pages of his theory of form it would appear that Klee desired to penetrate to the very depths of his knowledge of the universe; he speaks of space and time, of forces of gravity, of centrifugal and centripetal forces, of creation and destruction of the being, of the individual and the cosmos. Side by side with strangely

happy intuitions, with par&scientific propositions, with paradoxical postulates and with a vast quantity of very valuable annotations relating to the daily routine of pictorial work, one finds recollections of readings, passages revealing knowledge (which is neither superficial nor second-hand) of contemporary currents of thought, psychology of form, theory of visibility, psychoanalysis, the philosophy of phenomenology. Certainly all this does not constitute a system, but it does reveal a complicated construction in which everything seems to find its proper place.

Nothing is further from the artist’s mind than the assumption that he is producing a scientific work, what is important to him is to specify a dimension or a perspective, to recognise the limits of space and time in which one’s own existence manifests itself, to reweave the weft of the universe, from the starting point of one’s own ego, with its will to make or to shape.

Thus, he thinks, must the world appear to those who do not stand apart from it and contemplate it from outside; to those who see it from the inside, with its infinite prospects, its diverging paths which cross, wheel round, then open slowly along the apparently capricious curves of life's parabola; a world ever eccentric and peripheral, ‘irregular’ , yet nevertheless secretly obedient to certain laws, and ever striving to develop in order to find its path and break through to reality.

Thus space (and here we may note the similarity with the thought of Husserl and Heidegger) will no longer be a logical sequence of planes but above-below-in front-behind- Ieft- right in relation to the ‘l’ in space; time will no longer be a uniform progression, but in a before and after relation to the ‘l’ in time; and as nothing is static, that which is now in front, soon will be behind, and that which is now before will be after.

Space and time are simultaneously subjective and objective; for this reason the sequence of values is endless and each value is not permanently bound to the object, but to the existence of the object in this or that point of space and time. It is bound to the recollection of its having been, to the possibility of its future being, under completely different conditions of space and time. The object itself has no certainty; it might have been and might be no longer; it might not be, but might be going to be. Since it is, ultimately, only a meeting of co-ordinate lines, a luminous point in the dark expanse of possible space and time, it could change into another object, whose trajectory may come to pass through that point. Should the unforeseeable parabola of our life pass through that point it could be that we might ‘become’ that object. Reality is a never-ending metamorphosis; this is a thought Klee had inherited from Bosch, and shared with Kafka.

There is, however, something which differentiates man’s being and his actions, which differentiates cyclic changes of history from the unconscious changes and happenings in reality, something which, in the formal instability of metamorphosis, succeeds in isolating and defining forms and in making definite points of light.

It is the aim and the will of humanity somehow to control its own destiny, to know itself and clearly to establish its position in the confusion of chaos. Finally to ‘save itself’, if this expression still means something when confronted with an empty void. Nothingness, which stretches beyond the horizons of life, impels man ineluctably to find a solution here and now, within the uncertainty of the particular state of his society and of the individual within society.

The main thread which unravels itself throughout the whole of Klee’s theory is the search for quality; it is in the search for quality, namely the search for one’s own absolute authenticity, that mankind (as Kierkegaard would say) desires desperately to find in order to justify itself, and, perhaps, to save itself.

But it is not enough to desire this; to do or to become is life itself and it is only by acting consciously, and methodically, that one can attain some quality or value, which is also the value of existence, a full consciousness of each moment of it.

It may be said that Klee’s art and theory represent an attempt to reconstruct the world according to values of quality; and since these values are not given and are embedded in layers of false experience, it becomes necessary to distil these values by a transformation, a 'reduction to quality’ of the quantities. In other words, it becomes necessary to reduce progressively the conglomeration of quantitative phenomena which fill the universe and human existence, to the point of that irreducible and immutable minimum, which in fact represents quality, and which is to be found in all things which are real, although revealed only in meditation and in the production of works of art.

Notice how perspective, which is the typical quantitative construction of space, is elaborated in both Klee's painting and theory: or note the almost alchemistic treatment through which the chromatic scores emerge from the quantitative graduation of chiaroscuro, seeking in each note not just purity of tone, but the critical point of the passage from tonal volume to quality of timbre. The true meaning of this unceasing metamorphosis is therefore this: quantities are continually being raised to the level of qualities; and since this level is the level of consciousness, this last transformation can only take place in the mind of man. This is the humanistic foundation of Klee’s art and doctrine.

The quality value will only be reached finally when the form produced, or the art object, contains within itself all human experience, the sum of human experience since the beginning ,of time. The work of art will be, even so, an object closed within its own finality, but it will project itself upon the spatial horizon of the universe and the temporal horizon of humanity. The work of art, since quality possesses individual character, must be elaborated by the individual, but it will acquire a collective meaning; its power will be incommensurable, its active presence will never be erased from the world. The artist’s work, though it proceeds according to his own rhythm, will intertwine itself with the work of all mankind. ‘ We wish to be exact, but without limitations’; limitation is logic and calculation which determine the mechanism of modern productive techniques, the techniques of industry. We do not wish to destroy these techniques which possess almost unlimited possibilities: we want to develop them into more subtle and penetrating techniques harnessing both action and knowledge, manual and mental activity.

The Bauhaus had a definite programme: to restore production, which industrial techniques had developed only in a quantitative sense, to the search for quality values, in this way preserving autonomy, the creative possibility of a real existence, and, finally, the freedom of the individual in a society which was tending more and more to become a compact and uniform mass. But what are these quality values? The attitude of the Bauhaus on this point was ambiguous: in the first period at Weimar, following in the wake of the Werkbund, themes and procedures characteristic of ancient craftmanship were re-elaborated in an attempt to reduce traditional aesthetic values to a schematic system which could be applied to new industrial techniques. In the second period at Dessau, following the example of the Dutch group De Stijl, quality was sought in formal abstract concepts, in a mathematical rationalisation of the form selected as the image of the supreme rational quality of the human being.

Research, however, remained dialectically linked with the question of quantities; in the first instance attention was concentrated on an attempt to preserve certain traditional aesthetic values, whilst increasing the quantity of production; in the second instance, quality was transposed to the level of conceptual abstraction, leaving to production the task of mass-producing the model. It was precisely on this point - whether to conceive quality as a mere model or as a value which manifests itself and remains inherent in the object - that there arose the famous conflict between Walter Gropius and Theo van

Doesburg: this was one of the factors which caused the Bauhaus to change its programme to a more constructive level.

Klee was in fact the man who gave the search for quality a completely new basis, and made it a search for an autonomous and absolute value, which, though derived from quantity, is irrelevant to quantity itself. Quality for him was the ultimate product of the individual’s unrepeatable and unique experience; one achieves it by descending into the depths and by progressively clarifying the secret springs of one's actions, the myths and recollections lurking in the unconscious which strongly influence consciousness and action.

One must reach out for the point of prefiguration, the agony of death already suffered, without which there can be no completeness of existence or experience. The world we leave behind in this descent (which is also an ascent to superior spiritual forms) is the world of quantities, the dead world of forms already used, the world of logic, of positive science, of the masses, of politics, the three-dimensional world, in which everything assumes proportional and quantitative relations, the world of social classes characterised by degrees of power.

The world of qualities which opens out the more one descends into the unconscious depths, is not the world of forms already dead and established, but the world of nascent form, of formation, of Gestaltung: it is the world of unending organic relations which are born of real encounters and are measured by the effective strength which each image develops in its particular condition of space and time.

And since it is no longer admissible to draw any distinction between an object which is real and one which is imaginary, each image, being a moment of experience and of existence, is no longer a fixed and detached representation but preserves almost physical vitality. The transition from lower or passive forms, traditions or habits or remembrances which hamper man’s freedom (Husserl calls them 'So-sein'), to superior forms, in which freedom has its highest expression, that is to say creation, is accomplished in the image.

The image will continue to live in the world as a representation of the moment of the individual’s authentic existence, of his existence in the world. It will be the password among individuals, a vital link amongst the members of a community.

Klee never loses sight of other men, the community; he always tries to consider society as a single and multiform individual, with its own life story, its own ‘Erlebnis’. Unlike Mondrian he does not conceive of an idea! society, which finally and peacefully settles down into a common acceptance of incontrovertible rational truths; he prefers to seek the reasons for common understanding in living experience, in the history and pre-history of humanity, of the ‘people’, instead of in utopian plans for the future.

In society, individuals appear to him to be bound together by old ties, by the spirit of clan and tribe, by a host of beliefs and terrors, of myths, magical rites, superstitions and taboos; these are the ties which unite them organically to nature and the cosmos.

By understanding his own motives, the individual does not isolate himself in his own monad; on the contrary, he re-discovers in the myths of the unconscious the common roots of man’s being and his existence. Not only does he discover the relationship, but the unity of the one with the whole. In the world of quality, the mythical images shed all nocturnal shadows and become as clear as platonic ideas. The passive genesis (as Husserl would say), which collides with memory and matter, becomes active genesis. A new solidarity is established, independent of the objective rationality of certain accepted rules, but dependent on the discovery of a common origin and common ancestors; an origin which renews itself each moment, transmuting death into birth and giving to action a genuine creative meaning.

The vast cosmological vision evolved in Klee’s theory does not supply the key to the symbolic or semantic interpretation of the images and signs which appear in his paintings: it rather explains how each one of those images, each of those signs, contains a truth which each man will read according to his own experience and will find a place for in the rhythm of his own existence, and yet retains the same value of truth for everyone. Klee anticipates Adorno’s thesis of ‘Alienation’ and seeks the maximum ‘alienation’ or ‘consumption’ of artistic value in a maximum of quality and purity, in the elimination of all formal schemes, in the conquest of value which possesses both clarity of form as well as multiplicity and transmutability of meanings, the vitality, the capacity to associate itself with everyday life, which are characteristic of the image. The association with everyday life, the possibility of the work of art existing on a practical plane: this is another theme which links Klee’s poetics with the Bauhaus didactics.

It was Marcel Breuer who perceived the real significance of Klee’s teaching at the Bauhaus; to Breuer we owe the fact that Klee’s world of images has become an essential component of what is known as industrial design. The tubular furniture invented by Breuer in 1925, thread-like, suspended in improbable yet faultless equilibrium, precise and mechanical gadgets animated by a silent and vaguely ambiguous vitality, as if from one moment to another they might re-enter and dissolve into the space which they do not occupy, is certainly born of Klee's nervous and intense graphics, and the currents of strength which he infuses into his lines. This furniture inhabits man’s space like Klee’s images inhabit the space of his slanting and oblique perspectives, and of the mobile depths of his tonal layers. This furniture too is born of an invisible dynamic of space, and whilst fulfilling its function with impeccable accuracy, traces a new dimension in which relations are clarified, and values are brought to the purity and transparency of quality.

The capacity of the image or of the object-image (and every image is already an object) in no way contradicts the rational faith of the Bauhaus. If rationality is not an abstract formula, but the character of existence and human action, then the final distillation of experience which is achieved in art, in the ultimate analysis, is the work of a rational being. Klee’s didactic aim and, in a wider sense, the exemplary educative meaning of ail his work is to show how, through all the meditation and active creation which constitutes artistic activity, experience performs ever widening circles until finally it touches the furthermost limits of the universe and returns to the point of maximum intensity, that is, the point of formation, of Gestaftung, where each sign signifies at the same time the individual and the world, the present and all time.

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Giulio Carlo Argan

" New work is preparing itself; the demoniacal shall be melted into simultaneity with the celestial, the dualism shall not be treated as such, but in its complementary oneness. The conviction is al- ready present. The demoniacal is already peeking through here and there and cant be kept down. For truth asks that all elements be present at once. It is questionable how far this can be achieved in my circumstances, which are only halfway favorable. Yet even the briefest moment if it is a good one, can produce a document of a neiv pitch of intensity. "

PAUL KLEE

AND ASHAMED, 1939

Gouache and Watercolor on Paper Mounted on Board

Dimensions: 22.7 × 29.5 cm

RED HOUSE, 1929

Oil on Canvas Mounted on Cardboard

Dimensions: 25.4 × 27.6 cm

PAVILION OF NUMBERS, 1918

Watercolour and Pen and Ink on Paper

Dimensions: 16.3 x 8.9 cm.

SIBLINGS, 1930

DAME DEMON, 1935

Oil and Watercolour on Prepared Hessian Canvas on Card

Dimensions: 150 × 100 cm

MUTTER & KIND, 1938

Aquarell auf Grundierung auf Jute

Dimensions: 560 x 520 mm

OR THE MOCKED MOCKER, 1930

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 43.2 x 52.4 cm

Credit: Gift of J. B. Neumann

A YOUNG LADY’S ADVENTURE, 1922

Watercolour on Paper

Dimensions: Support: 625 x 480 mm
Frame: 686 x 510 x 20 mm

Collection: Tate

CONQUEST OF THE MOUNTAIN, 1939

Oil on Cotton

Dimensions: 95 × 70 cm

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

LA BELLE JARDINIERE, 1939

Oil and Tempera on Hessian Canvas

Dimensions: 95 × 71 cm

Centre Pompidou

MAGIC GARDEN, 1926

Oil on Plaster-Filled Wire Mesh in Artist's Frame

Dimensions: Plaster: 52.1 x 42.2 cm; Frame: 53 x 45.1 cm

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

Magic Garden was executed in 1926, the year Paul Klee resumed teaching at the Bauhaus at its new location in Dessau. During his Bauhaus period he articulated and taught a complex theoretical program that was supported and clarified by his painting and drawing. Theory, in turn, served to elucidate his art. Based on probing investigation and carefully recorded observation, his work in both areas reveals analogies among the properties of natural, of man-made, and of geometric forms.

Studies of plants illustrating growth processes appear often in Klee’s notebooks as well as in his paintings and drawings. He was also interested in architecture and combined images of buildings with vegetal forms in Magic Garden and several other works of 1926. Pictorial motifs often arise from geometric exercises: the goblet shape that dominates the lower center of this composition appeared also in a nonrepresentational drawing exploring the development from point to line to surface to volume.

The surface Klee creates with the medium of Magic Garden resembles that of a primordial substance worn and textured by its own history. A cosmic eruption seems to have spewed forth forms that are morphologically related but differentiated into various genera. Although excused from the laws of gravity, each of these forms occupies a designated place in a new universe, simultaneously as fixed and mobile as the orbits of planets or the nuclei of organic cells. Klee’s cosmic statements are gleefully irreverent; he writes of his work: “Ethical gravity rules, along with hobgoblin laughter at the learned ones.”̯

Lucy Flint

1. Quoted in W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, New York, 1954, p. 191.

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2160

INSULA DULCAMARA, 1938

Oil and ColourGlue Paint on Paper on Hessian Canvas

Dimensions: 88 × 176 cm

EXUBERANCE, 1939

Oil and ColourGlue Paint on Paper on Hessian Canvas

Dimensions: 101 × 130 cm

DAY MUSIC FROM ART D’AUJOURD’HUI, ART OF TODAY, MASTERS OF

ABSTRACT ART: ALBUM 1953 ( ORIGINAL COMPOSITION EXECUTED IN 1940 )

One From a Portfolio of Sixteen Screenprint Reproductions

After Paintings and Drawings

Dimensions: Composition (irreg.): 35 × 52.4
cm); Sheet: 49 × 63.9 cm

Publisher: Édition Art d'Aujourd'hui, Boulogne - Edition 300

Credit: The Louis E. Stern Collection

SHIPS IN THE DARK, 1927

Oil Paint on Canvas

Dimensions: Support: 427 x 590 mm

Collection: Lent From a Private Collection 2011
On Long Term Loan

THE VASE, 1938

Oil on Burlap on Burlap

Dimensions: 88 × 54.5 cm

GRAPHIK. ERSTE MAPPE.

MEISTER DES STAATLICHENBAUHAUSES IN WEIMAR, 1921

Lithograph in Colors, on Stiff Wove Paper

Dimensions: 38.7 × 26.4 cm

CHANT D’AMOUR A LA NOUVELLE LUNE, 1939

Watercolour on Hessian Canvas

Dimensions: 100 × 700 cm

Centre Pompidou

SENECIO, 1922

Oil on Canvas

SUNSET, 1930

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 46.1 × 70.5 cm

Credit Line: Gift of Mary and Leigh Block

Paul Klee was an artist and teacher at the Bauhaus for most of that famed school’s existence. Initially head of the bookbinding department, Klee made his greatest contribution as a lecturer on the theory of form in art for the basic design course. There, he developed his ideas about the “polyphony” of painting—the simultaneous effect of formal elements that produces “a transformed beholder of art.”

Klee was also a trained musician and shared with many artists of the early twentieth century the idea that music was the key to producing a new, abstract art. He was interested in the temporal character of music and its possible translation into forms of art. Works like Sunset reflect the principles of rhythm: linear structures, forms, and tonal values are orchestrated into a measured, vibrating image. To produce such a harmonious effect, Klee layered an intricate pattern of dots over a neutral background. Abstract, geometric, and overlapping shapes balance with recognizable forms, such as the schematic face in the upper left and the red sun and arrow in the lower right. The resulting composition—balancing stillness and movement, shallowness and depth—relates to Klee’s larger project of looking to music to produce an art that “does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible.”

FOREST WITCHES, 1938

Oil on Paper on Burlap

Dimensions: 99 × 74 cm

RISING STAR, 1931

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 63 × 50 cm

Fondation Beyeler

UNTITLED, CAPTIVE / FIGURE OF THIS WORLD – NEXT WORLD, CA. 1940

Oil and Coloured Paste on Primed Burlap on Burlap

Dimensions: 55.2 × 50.1 cm

Dimensions: Fondation Beyeler

MASQUE DE (JEUNE) = COMEDIEN, 1924

Oil on Canvas on Card Nailed to Wood

Dimensions: 36.7 × 33.8 cm

Centre Pompidou

DER VERLIEBTE, 1923

Color Lithograph

Dimensions: 27.4 × 19.1 cm

This is an Edition

FIGURE OF THE ORIENTAL THEATER, 1934

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

Courtesy of the Phillips Collection.

THEY'RE BITING, 1920

Watercolour and Oil Paint on Paper

Dimensions: 311 x 235 mm

Collection: Tate

DER EXKAISER, 1921

Oil Transfer, Watercolor and Gouache on

Paper Laid on Artist's Mount

Dimensions: 36.5 × 28.6 cm

THE BRIGHT SIDE POSTCARD FOR

‘’ BAUHAUS EXHIBITION WEIMAR 1923 ‘’

Lithograph

Dimensions: 9.8 x 14.4 cm; Sheet: 10.4 x 15 cm

Cream, Smooth, Wove (Board).

IN THE CURRENT SIX THRESHOLDS, 1929

Oil and Tempera on Canvas

Dimensions: 43.5 x 43.5 cm

CREDIT LINE

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

An assiduous student of music, nature, mathematics, and science, Klee applied this constellation of interests to his art at every turn. Even his purely abstract works have their own particular subject matter. In the Current Six Thresholds, an austere composition of horizontal chromatic stripes divided into smaller units and intersected by vertical bands, has been compared to landscape painting. A late Bauhaus work, it is part of a series of grid like canvases that Klee painted after he returned from a trip to Egypt. His visual impressions of the Nile river valley are represented here through a highly schematized, geometric analogy composed of a square lattice motif and restrained tonal variations. Another geometric painting, New Harmony, demonstrates the artist’s long-standing interest in color theory. Such flat configurations of painted rectangles appeared in Klee’s work as early as 1915 and evolved as expressions of his equation of chromatic division with musical notation. This late canvas, painted in 1936, is the last such composition and, in typical Klee fashion, looks toward the new and innovative, rather than nostalgically backward. According to art historian Andrew Kagan, the composition is based on the principle of bilateral inverted symmetry (the right side of the canvas is an upside-down reflection of the left) and the tonal distribution of juxtaposed, noncomplementary colors evokes the nonthematic, monodic 12-tone music of Arnold Schönberg. Kagan notes, in conjunction with this reading, that Klee used 12 hues in New Harmony, save for the neutral gray and the black underpainting.
Klee revealed a more socially and politically relevant side in his 1937 painting Revolution of the Viaduct, of which the Guggenheim’s Arches of the Bridge Break Ranks is an earlier version. Created when Fascism was on the rise in Europe, the image of rebellious arches escaping from the conformity of a viaduct invokes public dissension while promoting individuality. It is a flippant but foreboding reference to Albert Speer’s monolithic Nazi architecture as well as to official Soviet imagery of workers marching forward in unison. There is a poignant postscript to Klee’s social critique: after the artist fled Germany in 1937 to his native Switzerland, 17 of his works were displayed in the Nazis’ Degenerate Art exhibition, a show of Modern painting and sculpture that they considered too free-spirited and libertarian.

Nancy Spector

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2169

COMEDIAN ( INVENTION 4 ), 1904

Etching

Dimensions: image: 12.4 x 13.7 cm; Plate: 15.2 x 16.5 cm;

Sheet: 15.9 x 17.5 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of

Karl Nierendorf, By purchase

GAZE OF SILENCE, 1932

Oil on Burlap

Dimensions: 55.6 × 70.5 cm

TROPICAL GARDEN, 1923

Watercolor and Oil Transfer Drawing on Paper, with Watercolor on Cardboard Mount

Dimensions: Sheet: 17.9 x 45.5 cm; Mount: 24.5 x 56.5 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By Gift

COMEDY, 1921

Watercolour and Oil Paint on Paper

Dimensions: Support: 305 x 454 mm
Frame: 572 x 685 x 20 mm

Collection: Tate

PAUL KLEE 1879 – 1940: A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION CATALOG

BLACK KNIGHT, 1927

INTENTION, 1938

Couloured Paste on Paper on Burlap

Dimensions: 755 x 1123 mm

HORSE AND MAN, 1925

Oil Transfer, Ink, and Watercolor on Paper Mounted on Board

Dimensions: 34 × 50.2 cm

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTAL PLAN FOR LATE FALL, 1922

Watercolor With Ink on Paper

Dimensions: 18.9 × 30.6 cm

ZENTRUM PAUL KLEE

With around 4'000 works at its disposal the Zentrum Paul Klee has the most significant collection of paintings, aquarelles and drawings world-wide and includes archive and biographical material from all the periods of Paul Klee’s work.

A principal task of the Zentrum Paul Klee is to ensure that the artistic, pedagogic and theoretical work of Paul Klee as well as its significance within the cultural and social context of its time, is scientifically developed and communicated through different channels and media.

By posing topical questions, new scientific interpretations and innovative forms of communication, the Zentrum Paul Klee aims to bring Paul Klee’s artistic potential into the present.

Visitors are able to gather stimulating experiences and discoveries. This should motivate to a more intense understanding of Klee’s work and personality, artistic insight in general and to each individual’s cultural life.

Through its activities the Zentrum Paul Klee is established as the competence centre worldwide for the research and the communication of the life and work of Paul Klee, the history of its effect and other culturally relevant themes. It maintains an efficient and modern research infrastructure and develops distinctive proposals for exhibition and communication programmes, in accordance with scientific demands as well as the expectations of visitors of different age groups, biographical backgrounds and cultural interests.

For this purpose

- Rooms of high aesthetic and functional quality for the presentation of temporary exhibitions are available,

- The open and public accessible zone of the Museumsstrasse encourages a critical look at art by means of various media as well as the encounter between art and art enthusiasts,

- A generously conceived activity area for children, young people and adults encourages the development of their own creativity,

- An auditorium with ideal conditions for musical experiences is maintained,

- Modern equipped rooms for events and seminars are available to deal with themes on subject matter from the most varied areas of culture, science and business,

- The building designed by architect Renzo Piano and its surroundings offer a unique symbiosis of nature and culture.

The Zentrum Paul Klee was made possible through the founder families Klee and Müller, the authorities and the sovereign power of the City, the Canton and Burgergemeinde Bern as well as partners from business.

The concrete activities of the Zentrum Paul Klee are derived from the statutes of the Foundation of the Zentrum Paul Klee and are orientated toward realising the subsidy agreement with the Canton Berne, the City of Berne and the communities of the Regional Conference of Bern-Mittelland, the guidelines of the International Council of Museums ICOM as well as internal business regulations. As an institution, only partially supported by public funds, the Zentrum Paul Klee adheres in its business activities, especially in the declaration of accounts, to the imperative principles of transparency and submits to regular controls through the subsidisers.

http://www.zpk.org/en/service-navigation/about-us/concept-104.html

ZENTRUM KLEE ARCITECTURE

The beautiful piece of land, with the Villa Schöngrün and the Schosshalde graveyard with the grave of Paul Klee in the immediate vicinity, seemed as though created for the construction of a museum which would accommodate the complete work of the Paul Klee Foundation. The idea of combining nature and architecture in an exciting relationship to one another, met with the best premise here.

The idea

From the outset it was clear to Piano that the artist Paul Klee has «a too broad, too large breath», for him to be locked up into a «normal building». For the vision of his own work Renzo Piano allowed himself to be inspired by the identity of the place, the gently curved line of the terrain. That the motorway was also there, with a deep cut abruptly restricting the building site, did not disturb him. As a «Life line» of our civilisation it would be properly integrated into the project and find its aesthetic-functional echo here. It is very different at the back of the building: in order that the unity of nature and the architecture is not disturbed, it was also his explicit wish that the area around the building should be used as farm land and not converted into a park.

The hills

Renzo Piano noticed that the hills in the foreground stand like scenery in front of the horizon of the wooded hills in the background. The three hills blend as terrain contours with the ground and make the entire area into a landscape sculpture. As an artistic structure in its own right it houses the new cultural institution. Seen from the motorway the unusual roof structure is only visible for about ten seconds. Coming from the park it is not immediately clear whether the three curves are artificial or just natural. Only when in front of the main facade are the dimensions apparent: the middle curve is 12 metres high, the glass front to the motorway over 150 metres long.

The wish that the Zentrum should not only be a «Place of remembrance», but also an interchange between encounter, relaxation and enjoyment, Renzo Piano solved by spreading the Zentrum over three hills. Starting from Klee’s numerous different activities as painter, musician, teacher, writer and philosopher the aim of the Zentrum Paul Klee is to present the artist comprehensively in this complexity. As a result each of the three hills has its own task. The North Hill is used for the practice of art education, for music, the conferences and the workshops, the Middle Hill for displaying the collection and the changing exhibitions, the South Hill for research and administration.

The exhibition rooms

The overall capacity and diversity of the collection make it impossible to show all the works at one time. The particular sensitivity of Klee’s works also prevents any classical type of exhibition, in which the same works are always shown unchanged. Instead the Zentrum Paul Klee presents the works which belong to it in a regularly changing selection of about 120 to 150 works, which each time stand under a changing theme. Two exhibition rooms provide space for constantly new examinations of the works of Klee and the presentation of differing manifestations of visual art.

The Museum Street

The construction of the Zentrum is at the same time functional and highly technical. Directly behind the main facade of glass is the public area, the so-called Museum Street. This back-bone zone runs parallel to the motorway, is bright, sometimes noisy and for the visitors the only means of connection between the three hills. On entering the exhibition rooms, the noisy mood changes into quiet observation.

The lighting

Klee’s works are mostly pencil drawings and water colours, which may only be exposed to a maximum of 50 to 100 Lumens. The main hall in the Middle Hill is a pure artificially lit room, like the exhibition hall on the lower floor of the building. The basic lighting is installed in the vault of the steel girders, which shines indirectly onto the roof of the room. The individual pictures are emphasised by spots. The day-light which comes in through the whole glass facade is controlled and dampened by means of an automatic sun protection system.

The façade

One consequence of the building’s unusual geometry is the intricate design used for the 150 metre long glass façade. The façade is divided into an upper and lower section along its entire length. The two façade sections are marginally offset and connected by the canopy (the roof of the Museum Street) at a height of 4 metres above the level of the ground floor. The glass façade measures 19 metres at its highest points, and the largest panes of glass weigh almost half a metric ton and measure 6 x 1.6 metres.

Earthworks

In spite of the impressive dimensions of the three hills large sections of the Zentrum Paul Klee are actually situated on the underground floors. This fact is made clear by the 180,000 cubic metres of earth that have been moved since 15 October 2001, involving some 15,000 truck movements on the site, and by the 1,100 tonnes of steel girders, 1,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 10,000 cubic metres of concrete put into place.

https://www.zpk.org/en/service-navigation/about-us_0/architecture-107.html

RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP

Renzo Piano Building Workshop company profile The Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) is an international architectural practice with offices in Paris and Genoa.

The Workshop is led by 13 partners, including founder and Pritzker Prize laureate, architect Renzo Piano. The company permanently employs nearly 130 people. Our 90-plus architects are from all around the world, each selected for their experience, enthusiasm and calibre.

The company’s staff has the expertise to provide full architectural design services, from concept design stage to construction supervision. Our design skills also include interior design, town planning and urban design, landscape design and exhibition design services.

Since its formation in 1981, RPBW has successfully undertaken and completed over 120 projects across Europe, North America, Australasia and East Asia. Among its best known works are: the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas; the Kansai International Airport Terminal Building in Osaka; the Kanak Cultural Center in New Caledonia; the Beyeler Foundation in Basel; the Rome Auditorium; the Maison Hermès in Tokyo; the Morgan Library and the New York Times Building in New York City; and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Recently completed works include the Shard in London, and the new Whitney Museum in New York.

The quality of RPBW’s work has been recognised by over 70 design awards, including major awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

In all our work we aim to address the specific features and potential of a particular situation, embracing them into the project while responding to the requirements of the program. We continue to push the limits of building technology – innovating, refining and experimenting – to come up with the very best solution for each situation.

Our method of working is highly participatory, with clients, engineers and specialist consultants all contributing from the beginning of a project and throughout the design process.

Our approach to design is not strictly conventional and involves the use of physical models and one-to-one scale mockups to help test and develop our proposed design concepts. We also believe that the design process is not linear and that it requires architects to think and draw on different scales at the same time, considering each finished detail in the development of the overall design.

http://www.rpbw.com/en/architecture/3/the-firm/4/company-profile/

ZENTRUM PAUL KLEE

BLUMENMYTHOS ( FLOWER MYTH ), 1918 - 1982
Watercolour on a Pastel Sketch on Gauze on

Newspaper on Silver-Bronze Paper on Cardboard

Dimensions: 29 x 15.8 cm

PORTRAIT AN EQUILIBRIST 1927

Oil and Collage on Cardboard Over Wood With Painted Plaster Border

Dimensions: 63.2 x 40 cm

Credit: Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund

THE SUBLIME SIDE POSTCARD FOR

‘’ BAUHAUS EXHIBITION WEIMAR 1923 ‘’

Lithograph

Dimensions: Composition: 14.3 x 7.4 cm; Sheet: 15 x 10.5 cm

Cream, Smooth, Wove (Board).

PAUL KLEE TO LILY KLEE, 1932

Oil and Paste Paint on Paper on Jute

Orginal Frame Strips

Dimensions: 100 x 70 cm

DISPUTE, 1929

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 670 x 670 mm

A PRIZE CREEP, 1939

Colored Crayon on Paper

Dimensions: 21 × 34.9 cm

( FROM THE SONG OF SONGS ) VERSION II, 1921

Ink and Watercolor on Paper, with Watercolor on Cardboard Mount

Dimensions: sheet: 16.2 x 17.4 cm; Mount: 27.4 x 27.4 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By Purchase

SCHERZO WITH THIRTEEN, 1922

Oil Transfer Drawing, Watercolor, Ink, and

Pencil on Paper on Board

Dimensions: 27.9 x 35.9 cm

Laid Paper Mounted on Board

SEILTANZER, 1923

Color Lithograph on Laid Paper With Deckle Edges

Dimensions: 43.4 × 26.9 cm

BURDENED CHILDREN, 1930

Graphite, Crayon and Ink on Paper on Board

Dimensions: 650 x 458 mm

Collection: Tate

Bequeathed by Elly Kahnweiler 1991 to Form Part of the Gift of

Gustav and Elly Kahnweiler, Accessioned 1994

Paul Klee worked on small scale, creating microcosmic worlds in drawings, watercolours and oils. Frequently creations of the imagination and often childlike in their apparent simplicity and directness, his pictures were nonetheless rooted in acute observations of the natural world, human behaviour and an appreciation of the small, unremarked incidents of everyday life.

Klee’s appointment in 1921 as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar introduced a new phase in his art. He began to formulate a more theoretical approach, giving his art a rational basis as a counterweight to the power of intuition. His pedagogical notebooks formed the basis of lectures and of several essays he wrote in the early 1920s, in which he explored the fundamental components of his creative process: line, tone-value and colour. However, Klee still believed that theory was but a means to an end.

Burdened Children illustrates the manner in which Klee elaborated elements of these fundamental principles. ‘I begin where all pictorial form begins: with a point that sets itself in motion.’ (Quoted in Spiller 1961, p.24.) This drawing demonstrates the movement from a point to a line, which in turn creates planar forms. It consists of an almost unbroken line that forms a series of round-cornered, interlocking boxes. Klee then added stick legs and eyes to give the shapes a human character. It was unusual for Klee to have given the two figures such heavy outlines, a feature chiefly associated with his work in the later 1930s. However, the heavy black might have been one reason for giving the drawing its title. Klee clearly found something unusual in this composition, because he made five different variants in different media. Of these, the closest in compositional elements to this work is Twins, 1930 (present location unknown), although Klee filled the inner planes of the figures with a combination of shading, hatching and dots.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/klee-burdened-children-t06796

HERO MOTHER, 1927

Watercolor, Ink, and Graphite on Paper Mounted on Board

48.6 × 31.3 cm

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

RUNNER AT THE GOAL, 1921

Watercolor and Graphite on Paper, Mounted on

Cardboard with Gouache Border

Dimensions: 39.4 x 30.2 cm overall

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By purchase

THE PRINCE & HIS TOWN, 1925

Watercolour and Pen in Ink, Partially Sprayed on

French Ingres Paper Mounted on Backing Cardboard.

Dimensions: 49.5 × 34.5 cm

RAYÉ DE LA LISTE, 1933

Oil on Paper on Card

Dimensions: 31.5 × 24 cm

PRESENTATION DE MIRACLE, 1916

Gouache, Pen and Ink on Prepared Fabric, Mounted on Card

Dimensions: 29.2 × 23.6 cm

ANIMALS MEET, 1938

Oil and Color With Glue on Cardboard on Polywood

Dimensions: 420 x 505 mm

A POLYPHONIC PAINTING: PAUL KLEE & RHYTHM BY ELIANE ESCOUBAS

In an article from 1912, Klee situates himself in the context of expressionism as opposed to impressionism:

‘’ Both invoke a decisive moment in the genesis of the work: for impressionism this is the instant in which the impression of nature is received, whereas for expressionism, it is the subsequent instant, that in which the received impression is rendered. Impressionism stops with the observation of form, rather than rising to its active construction. ‘’

And he adds a few lines later:

‘’ One particular branch of expressionism is represented by cubism. 1 ‘’

Thus for Klee, a painting will not depict states of feeling, but rather will be an active construction. But what does this notion of "construction" imply? It essentially adds a sense of temporal unfolding that the impressionist painting lacks, as the famous " Schopferische Konfession " of 1918 makes clear:

‘’ Is a painting ever born in a single moment? Certainly not! It is built up little by little, no differently than a house. And does the spectator make a tour of the work in an instant?

( Often yes, alas... ) On the side of the spectator also, the principal activity is temporal.... The artwork is movement, it is itself a fixed movement, and is perceived in movement

( the eye-muscles ). 2 ‘’

If time is a fundamental principle of the pictorial work, then its proximity to the musical work is evident. And Klee specifies:

‘’ The musical work has the advantage of being perceived in the exact order of succession in which it had been conceived, whereas the plastic work presents the uninformed with the difficulty of not knowing where to begin. To the informed spectator, however, it presents the advantage of being able to vary the order of its reading and thus to become aware of its multiple meanings. 3 ‘’

The pictorial work is thus not an object but an event. It does not have the fixity of an object; and to look at it is to allow oneself to be taken along varied and often unknown paths, that are " set up " in the work. This is why Klee declares: " The singular optical path no longer responds to today's needs. " 4

There would be, then, a difference between the optical eye and the pictorial eye. If the optical eye is insufficient, then what kind of eye is at issue in painting? Is it the haptic eye, a vision touching, as Riegl defines it in Questions of Style? Not this either. Let us, for the moment, designate it as the " musical eye. " We will encounter this again and again in the course of our analyses.

This is why Klee speaks of a " plastic polyphony, " 5 in " Schopferische Konfession, " describing it as follows: " The separation of the elements of form, and their arrangement in subdivisions; the dislocation of this order and the reconstruction of a totality on all sides simultaneously; plastic polyphony, the achievement of repose through the equilibrium of movement, so many questions decisive for the science of forms, but not yet art in the supreme sense, " adding that " polyphonic painting is superior to music in the sense that the temporal element is present in it as a spatial given. " 6

If, as he writes in 1928, " to draw and to paint is to learn to see behind a facade, to grasp something underlying, to recognize the underlying forces, to unveil, " 7 then we shall hypothesize that it is "rhythm," as movement and time, as subjacent force, that is to be unveiled and produced. Rhythm would be this arch-sensibility, this implication of time and of movement, whose fundamental determination we find in Henri Maldiney's analyses in " The Aesthetics of Rhythm ": " Art is the truth of the sensible because rhythm is the truth of aisthesis. "

In order to define rhythm, Maldiney appeals to the analyses of the Greek ruth mos as Benveniste elaborates it:

‘’ The Greek ruth mos does mean form in the sense of schema, but a particular kind of form that is different from the schema. Whereas the schema is fixed, realized form, posited as an object, ruthmos designates form in the instant in which it is taken up by that which is moving, fluid. It is improvised, momentary, modifiable form. 8 ‘’

In addition to Maldiney's analyses, we shall also refer to Pierre Sauvanet's studies in his two-volume work Le rythme et la raison. There, the author elaborates three criteria of analysis which he presents as "combinatorial criteria": structure (or schema ), periodicity ( periodos ), and movement [metabole): "The rhythmical, in the strong sense, is both discontinuous and regular (periodicity), while allowing for a margin of irregularity (movement), and presenting itself globally as a continuity (the ensemble structure-periodicity-movement)." He then calls rhythm " any perceived phenomenon to which one can attribute at least two of these three criteria." 9

CONSTRUCTION: TECTONIC FORMS AND ENERGETIC FORMS

To construct, for Klee, is to produce a structure. For our part, we shall speak of

" tectonic " and " energetic " forms. In a painting, we shall suggest, two sorts of forms are articulated, juxtaposed, mixed or opposed. The tectonic forms are lines of construction ( folds, breaks, frames, dislocations, interlacings, stratifications, etc. ); the others, the energetic forms, are lines of force ( weights, attractions, contractions, elevations, shocks, stops, and suspensions ). And these forms are not figurative forms: they are not necessarily the outlines that delimit figures or that streak across their surfaces. They are not necessarily objectival lines, but lines along which the gaze is led lines that thereby " construct " the gaze.

What then is to be understood by " construction," and by " structure " ?

Klee's first works are drawings and engravings: from 1901 to 1905, he creates a cycle of eleven etchings entitled Inventions, which are a sort of deconstruction of natural structures. These are the famous caricatures, deformed figures—almost monstrously so—the " de-figured, " so to speak, such as the Two Men Meet, Each Supposing the Other to Be of Higher Rank ( Zwei Manner, einander in hoherer Stellung vermutend, begegnen sich ), Winged Hero ( Held m. Flugel ), or Aged Phoenix ( Greiser Phonix ). Here we find dislocation and deformation at the same time as construction. A construction that de-forms, a de-formation that constructs. For Klee, the issue is one of abandoning the re-production of the object. And what is more evident in caricature than the abandonment of this reproduction? Grimacing figures, disproportions, contortions, different kinds of anamorphosis, or as he writes: " the exaggeration of the ugly parts of the model. " Seemingly arbitrary deformations of natural reality; in his journal he mentions

Bocklin and Goya as his inspirations.

This is also why Klee recognizes his proximity to cubism, which, according to him, is (as we have seen) " a branch of expressionism." However, that in cubism to which he is attached, that which will become important later, is what he will call " numerical determination ":

‘’ The cubists for their part push numerical determination to the smallest details.... Cubist reflection rests essentially on the reduction of all proportion and culminates in primordial forms, like the triangle, rectangle, and the circle. 10

Of course, with the etchings entitled Inventions, Klee has not yet arrived at the " primordial forms " of the cubists—but he will discover them. And the statement so often repeated since that time, " art does not reproduce the visible, it renders visible, " could, on a first reading (although this is not the only one possible), refer back to these deformations, these numerical determinations, reductions, and distortions.

No doubt, the superb series of drawings of angels from1939, from the end of Klee's life, can also be classified under this genre of " deformation. "

Yet these caricatures, like the later Angels, are not static, deformed forms, but rather what Klee calls dynamical forms. They are what Klee, in his Bauhaus lectures, calls

" structural rhythms ": "the most primitive structural rhythms based on repetition of one sole unity in the sense of left-right or up-down." This is a remarkable formulation insofar as it concerns precisely the notion of structure as " dividual assemblage, " which is to say as divisible assemblage—which is precisely the situation with numerical elements. 11 But what are we to understand by " structural rhythms "? We must go back to the Bauhaus course and " On Modern Art, " which concentrates the advances the course makes.

We can reconstitute the unfolding of structure in pictorialterms. Klee writes: " I begin logically from chaos." 12

Now, chaos is represented by the point, the point without breadth (geometrically defined as the intersection of two lines). If I place the tip of my pencil on the point then it becomes a line: " From the dead point, the initiation of the first act of mobility (line). " 13 The exit from chaos is by definition a " movement. " If I prolong the line and produce other lines, I have a surface. Point, line, surface: " the specific elements of graphical art are points and energies, linear, planiform and spatial. " 14

Are we re-discovering, here, a Cartesian space, defined by " figure and movement "? Perhaps, and yet Klee's lines and sur faces have a number of very different aspects. Thus, in a sort of dream narrated a little after having described these " acts of mobility, " he writes:

‘’ The most diverse lines. Stains, blurred strokes, smooth, striated, blurred surfaces. Undulating movement. Inhibited movement. Articulated, counter movement. Braiding, weaving, masonry. Imbrication. Solo. Multiple voices. Disappearing lines in the process of being reactivated (dynamism). 15 ‘’

This will be an " orchestra of forms " for the eye. In this space, " The eye must graze the surface, absorb it piece by piece. " 16 Thus, the horizontal and the vertical are set in place:

‘’ The vertical is the right path, the upright position or the balance of the animal. The horizontal designates its extent, its horizon. Each one is an entirely terrestrial affair, static. 17 ‘’

Furthermore, the upright human position is represented by the plumb line—oriented toward the center of the earth, for weight is the fundamental law of the terrestrial: everything falls. In order to avoid falling, there is only movement: an upright person will advance a foot, offset a leg in order not to stumble, not to lose balance. 18 Walking is the only way of not losing balance: it is a balancing that is constantly wavering and being re-established.

A slight nudge to the plumb line and it begins to oscillate like a pendulum. 19

Whence a fundamental law for Klee (as well as for cubism): balance is not symmetry. Nor is it only alternation: the tightrope walker with his balancing rod is an example of the constant conquest of equilibrium. These are what Klee calls "non-symmetrical balances" made of dissemblance and difference. It is necessary to insist on this: the fundamental notion of balance or equilibrium that is not symmetry. This is what underlies not only the critique of perspectival painting (geometrical perspective founded on symmetry), but it is also what becomes the central notion of modern painting. Again: the fundamental law of modern painting is expressed thus: balance is not symmetry—this law, as we shall see, will be crucial to the understanding of the notion of rhythm.

Turning now to what Klee calls the " dimensions " of the painting, we arrive at the basis for the entire theory of pictorial " construction " and of its overcoming in pictorial

" composition, " as explained in "On Modern Art." The " dimensions " of the paintingare line, tonality of chiaroscuro, and color. As Klee explains:

‘’ The most limited of the givens is the line solely a matter of measure.... The tonalities or the values of chiaroscuro and the numerous gradations between white and black are a question of weight.... The colors offer other characteristics, for neither rule nor balance al low for complete mastery. I would call colors qualities.... These three guiding ideas are like three domains encapsulated in each other. 20 ‘’

Therefore, line, tonality (chiaroscuro), and color are measure, weight, and quality. No doubt this is why after the first caricatures and deformations or distortions in the drawings and engravings, Klee gives himself over to tonalities around 1907-08: " I construct landscapes in black and white, painted on glass." 21 The tonalities black white, lightening - darkening are dynamical forms.

For Klee, pictorial space is not an extension related to measure, it is an energy. It is a space of stretchings, slidings, straddlings: not a state but a process. Tonalities too are an energy from which the forms we have called " energetic " take their starting point. Where then is the distinction between what we have called " tectonic forms " and

" energetic forms " ? It is tonality, and above all color, that for Klee will be the true revelation of energetic forms. If there is, however, a tectonic dynamic then it is always subject to the inflexible law of free fall. It is thus purely " terrestrial " because the tectonic is the terrestrial. For the painter, the tectonic dynamic must accede to a superior form, to pure energetic form. This is where the painter moves from construction to " composition. "

" We would like henceforth to give it the musical name of com position " and he adds: " In this received form, the world is not the only world possible. " 22

There are, thus, other " possible worlds. " These are the worlds that painting will offer us. These are the "possible worlds" for which, with Klee, we shall now search.

APPEARING: THE TERRESTRIAL AND THE COSMIC

What does it mean to speak of multiple " possible worlds " ? The " world " is not, nor has it ever been for Klee, a world of substance, determined once and for all and filled with beings themselves objectively determined. On the contrary, that which is painted in the painting is the insubstantiality of the world; it is the appearing of that which appears. An appearing that itself does not appear.

The appearing of that which appears is varied and multiple and it has nothing to do with the notion of semblance that has always accompanied the thesis of the substantiality of the world. What the painter tries to make " manifest " is this " appearing. "

" In this point of conjunction (of the inner and outer vision of things) are rooted the forms created by the hand, completely distinct from the physical aspect of the object but which—on the other hand, from the point of view of totality—do not contradict it. " It is also a matter of " freely creating abstract forms.... These forms achieve a new nature, the nature of the work. "23

Earlier, Klee had spoken of a " resonance between You (the object) and Me, transcending all optical relation. " Is this not, again, the distinction we had proposed between the pictorial eye and the optical eye? Is this not what Klee is declaring in the famous phrase " art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible " ? Is this not what Merleau-Ponty will call " the concentration and advent to itself of the visible " ? 24

As is well known, toward 1911 - 1912 Klee came into contact with the Blaue Reiter group; thus with Kandinsky, Kubin, Franz Marc, and Macke among others he collaborated on the second issue of the group's journal. 25

It is above all with color that Klee will paint appearing, but never without construction. It is on the occasion of a trip to Tunisia in April 1914, with two friends from the Blaue Reiter (Moilliet and Macke), that Klee has a revelation concerning color. He writes, in his journal, on April 16, in Kairouan:

‘’ It penetrates so deeply and so gently into me, I feel it and it gives me confidence in myself without effort. Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter. 26 ‘’

Also worth mentioning are the watercolors from 1914 - 1915, such as Before the Gates of Kairouan (vor den Toren v. Kairuan ), View of St. Germain ( Ansicht v. St. Germain; plate 58), Garden in St. Germain, the European Quarter of Tunis ( Garten in der tune sischen Europaer Kolonie St. Germain)—all of which display an almost Cezanne-like technique 27—or In the Kairouan Style ( im Stil v. Kairouan ) with its more marked geometrism.

Let us return to Klee's theoretical writings and in particular to the Bauhaus course

( Walter Gropius invited Klee to teach, beginning in 1921, in Weimar and then in Dessau ). Having named the three characters - the linear, the tonal, and the chromatic - and having established the terrestrial as the domain of the massive, it becomes necessary for Klee to interrogate what he calls the " intermediary milieu " of air and water. This interrogation of intermediary milieu allows him to distinguish quite pertinently between " rigid rhythms " and " unbounded rhythms. " Rigid rhythms, such as a man climbing a staircase, a falling stone bouncing down an incline, and unbounded rhythms, such as a rising balloon, a meteor.

Thus pictorial " composition, " which is to hold together construction and phenomenon, is itself the combination of rigid and unbounded rhythms. This is how, what Klee calls a " superior polyphony " is formed, and it is how the painting becomes a " superior organism, " a " synthesis of dissemblances " 28 and an " organization of multiplicity in a unity. " 29

But what does this mean? It will suffice for us to continue the investigation of movement. Klee picks up the analysis of the pendulum where he had left off: " Let us free the pendulum from weight. " In giving to it a strong impetus, the pendulum is put into a continual circular motion until it is stopped. It thus logically describes a never-ending circle. The circle is " the purest of dynamical forms. " 30

Circular movement - the purest of movements - frees us from pendulum movement and from the earth that dominated the theory of lines and of surfaces. 31 With circular movement ( for example that of a spinning top when it encounters no obstacle or resistance, or that of the spiral ) we penetrate into the " cosmic, " infinite, movement freed from terrestrial weight. On the contrary, terrestrial movements are finite movements with a beginning and an end. The analyses of the circle and of its theoretically infinite rotation also introduce us to the superb analyses of color that occupy two of the last Bauhaus courses ( numbers ten and eleven, those from November 28 and December, 12, 1922 ). Here, Klee elaborates what he calls a " topography of color " in accordance with the work of Chevreuil, Goethe's Farbenlehre,

and Otto Runge's color-circle. He refers, also, to Delacroix and to Cezanne as well as to research by his Bauhaus contemporaries Kandinsky and Johannes Itten, and by Delaunay. The " topography of color " finds its specific place in connection with the chromatic circle. Thus, he writes in course number ten:

‘’ We free the pendulum of weight, let it loose so that it might enter... into the domain of perfect rotation and of complete movement within the symbol of the circle where pure colors are truly at home. 32 ‘’

Why are pure colors at home in the symbol of the circle? Klee explicates the chromatic circle in the manner of his aforementioned predecessors. He places, as they do, the primary colors (yellow, red, blue) at three points on the perimeter of the circle and does the same for the secondary colors (orange, purple, green)—each secondary color (composed of the two closest primary colors on the circle) is the complement of the primary color diametrically across from it. Here, two phenomena can be observed: first, the primary color and its complement are reciprocally engendered in the eye, and second, that there is " gray " between two colors - this gray will be the center of the circle. All this is well known, and as Klee knew, the same relation can be established with the diameters of the circle as well as with the perimeter.

It is noteworthy, and particularly important to Klee, that with " peripheral " movement, colors are themselves in an infinite and continuous movement - which is to say that they acquire the determination " cosmic. " This is why the rainbow is an insufficient representation of color: on the one hand a rainbow is only a semi-circle, and on the other hand, it juxtaposes colors instead of circulating them on the periphery of a circle briefly put, the rainbow lacks the aspect of time.

Course number eleven pursues the investigation by posing a question that, by now, has become essential. For, as Klee says, the question is not "what is red?" ( or "what is blue?" etc. ). The question the painter refuses here is the question in search of a definition, the question in search of an object, an essence or a substance. The question is much more the following: " What is it that red does not signify? Where does its activity end? What is its reach? " 33

The difference between the two kinds of question is particularly important because the second question - the one that is to be posed - is not at all one of definition, object, substance, or essence. It is, rather, a question in search of the phenomenon " red ," of red as appearing. How far does it go? Where does it end? This is the question of the appearing of color. Thus, in painting the relation between appearing and color is affirmed as we have already seen.

One might ask how Klee justifies this displacement of the traditional " what is it? " question in favor of the question concerning appearing. It will be useful to return to the chromatic circle, in which what red does not signify is green, the complement, for red and green cancel each other out (let us note that mixing red and green gives gray). The active range of red is equivalent to two-thirds of the circumference, with a culminating red point, an extreme " hot " red ( yellowish red ) and an extreme " cold red " ( bluish red ). The other third, from which red is totally absent, is opposite the high point of red and is its complement: green - where red is no longer active, where it no longer appears. Klee has thus responded to the question he posed: " what does red not signify, where does it end, what are its limits? " Its limits consist in the two-thirds of the periphery of the circle extending in both directions from the culminating red point. The same goes for each of the other primary colors, blue and yellow.

Thus the active chromatic range of each color occupies two thirds of the periphery of the chromatic circle. Whence we derive the following two laws: on the one hand, every primary color's culminating point is free of the influence of the other two culminating points; on the other hand, each color's range of influence occupies two thirds of the periphery of the circle. Hence, two primary colors slide, so to speak, overlap and intrude upon each other while weakening in this work of overlapping and intruding. And thus at the same time that one color begins, the neighboring color has already begun on the circle: it flows for a span of time between the two " appearing " of both colors—and this is, properly speaking, the rule of polyphony. As Klee explains:

‘’ Each color begins from its nothingness, which is the neighboring summit (the culminating point of the neighboring color), at first weakly, and rises to its own summit from which it descends again in order to disappear into its nothingness which is the other neighboring summit.... Colors do not resonate on the circle in a single voice, but rather in a sort of three voiced song. They raise their voices one after the other, as in a canon. At each of the three principal points, one voice culminates, another voice gradually approaches, and a third voice expires.... One might call this new figure the canon of totality. 34 ‘’

Have we not, here, come upon the concept of " pictorial polyphony " ? Indeed, and it is constructed exactly on the model of musical polyphony. In the latter, there is not a juxtaposition of voices, but rather a superposition each voice begins with a certain temporal gap or temporal delay relative to the preceding voice. Pictorial polyphony, as described here for the primary colors, is apolyphony in three movements.

If circular representation signifies return and repetition, then the succession of colors on the circle this form of color continuity made of slidings and intruding is of a type wholly other than linear or surface continuity. Indeed this chromatic continuity is composed of (dis)continuities ( for when a primary colormeets another primary color a void of color emerges—grayness ). Chromatic (dis)continuity thus admits leaps. Klee expresses this magnificently in writing that with linear and spatial continuity, the eye is like an animal that grazes and feeds, moving gradually, whereas in chromatic (dis)continuity, the eye is like a predatory animal, leaping and jumping. 35

With the metaphor of polyphony, therefore, we leave behind the domains of linearity and of weight, the domain that Klee calls the " terrestrial, " and we enter into the domain of the "cosmic." At this point, one must note that Klee had already expressed this difference of the terrestrial and the cosmic long ago notably in his Diaries, after reporting the death of Franz Marc at Verdun, March 4, 1916:

‘’ From the moment I say who Franz Marc is, I must say who I am, for much of that in which I participate belongs equally to him. With Marc, the thinking of the terrestrial primes the thinking of the cosmos.... The Faustian tendency in him.... Often in these last days, the fear arose in me that one day he would be opposed to me.... My ardor is more of the order of the dead and of beings unborn. The passionate manner of the human is undoubtedly missing in my art. I do not love animals and the totality of beings with a terrestrial heart. Rather, I sub merge myself at first in totality. The terrestrial, for me, cedes place to the thinking of the cosmic. My love is distant and religious. 36 ‘’

A few lines later he adds, most excellently: " The human in my work does not represent the species but a cosmic point. " 37

We shall see how, from 1915- 16 until the end of his life, Klee realizes this in painting.

ESSAY QUOTED FROM BOOK OF ‘’ PAUL KLEE

PHILOSOPHICAL VISION: FROM NATURE TO ART ‘’

DANCING GIRL, 1940

Oil on Cloth

Dimensions: 53.3 × 51.2 cm

Credit Line: Gift of George B. Young

MUMOM, DRUNK, COLLAPSES INTO AN ARMCHAIR, 1940

Coloured Paste on Paper on Cardboard

Dimensions: 29.5 × 21 cm

THE BONDS OF THE INTELLECT, 1927

THE APPROXIMATE MAN FROM THE DELUXE EDITION OF THE BOOK L’HOMMEAPPROXIMATIF BY TRISTAN TZARA, 1931

Etching and Drypoint

Dimensions: Plate: 17.8 x 13.9 cm; Sheet: 24.5 x 20 cm

Cream, Smooth, Wove (Van Gelder Zonen).

THE BAVARIAN DON GIOVANNI, 1919

Watercolor and Ink on Paper

Dimensions: 22.5 x 21.3 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,

Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By purchase

Paul Klee’s persistent shifts in style, technique, and subject matter indicate a deliberate and highly playful evasion of aesthetic categorization. Nevertheless, it is virtually impossible to confuse a work by Klee with one by any other artist, even though many have emulated his idiosyncratic, enigmatic art. So accepted was his work that Klee was embraced over the years by the Blue Rider group, the European Dada contingent, the Surrealists, and the Bauhaus faculty, with whom he taught for a decade in Weimar and Dessau.

As part of the early 20th-century avant-garde, Klee formulated a personal abstract pictorial language. His vocabulary, which oscillates freely between the figurative and the nonrepresentational, communicates through a unique symbology that is more expressive than descriptive. Klee conveyed his meanings through an often whimsical fusion of form and text, frequently writing the titles to his works on the mats upon which they are mounted and including words within the images themselves. Such is the case with The Bavarian Don Giovanni, in which Klee indicated his admiration for the Mozart opera as well as for certain contemporary sopranos, while hinting at his own amorous pursuits. A veiled self-portrait, the figure climbing the ladder is surrounded by five women’s names, an allusion to the operatic scene in which Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello recites a list of his master’s 2,065 love affairs. Citing Klee’s confession that his “infatuations changed with every soubrette at the opera,” art historian K. Porter Aichele has identified the Emma and Thères of the watercolor as the singers Emma Carelli and Thérèse Rothauser. The others—Cenzl, Kathi, and Mari—refer to models with whom Klee had fleeting romantic interludes.

Although much of Klee’s work is figurative, compositional design nearly always preceded narrative association. The artist often transformed his experiments in tonal value and line into visual anecdotes. Red Balloon, for example, is at once a cluster of delicately colored, floating geometric shapes and a charming cityscape. Runner at the Goal is an essay in simultaneity; overlapping and partially translucent bars of color illustrate the consecutive gestures of a figure in motion. The flailing arms and sprinting legs add a comic touch to this figure, on whose forehead the number “one” promises a winning finish.

Nancy Spector

DISPUTE, 1929

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 670 x 670 mm

BEWITCHED - PETRIFIED, 1934

"The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter)", 1912, The Second Exhibition Catalogue,

Cover by Kandinsky, Published by Hans Goltz Munich, RARE, 1912

Print on Paper

Dimensions: 15 × 12 cm

TWO GENTLEMEN BOWING TO ONE ANOTHER, EACH SUPPOSING

THE OTHER TO BE IN A HIGHER POSITION ( INVENTION 6 ), 1903

Etching on Paper

Dimensions: 11.8 x 20.7 cm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By purchase

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November 26, 2019

PAUL KLEE: THE THINKING EYE