Swiss-German artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) - One of the most distinctive painters of the twentieth century.

This handsome coffee table book published by Phaidon Press contains forty-eight stunning full-page color reproductions along with a ten-page essay by art historian Douglas Hall on the life and work of artist Paul Klee. I must say I learned a great deal by reading what Hall had to say, particularly his observations on specific works, so much so that seven of the eight Douglas Hall quotes below address one of the artist’s paintings. I have also included my modest comments on what I find especially engaging about each work.

"Paul Klee was part poet and visionary, part disciplined, methodical craftsman and well-regulated bourgeois." ---------- There is no question Paul Klee possessed the two vital ingredients for creating great art: vision and mastery of craft. Many are the would-be creators who have approached their chosen form of art and have subsequently discovered the hard way that without both - vision and mastery of craft - creating quality art quickly becomes an uphill battle. Of course, Paul Klee was an artist with an extraordinary, keen eye and an exceptionally powerful vision.

"This self-portrait, The Artist at the Window is an early example of Klee’s use of watercolor as an independent medium and not an adjunct to drawing. There are outlines to the figure, but they are made of light coming from behind and are part of the form.” --------- So color and light take center stage, as in the sunlit window casting light on the artist’s pad; both window and pad accentuated and illuminated by the muted shades of brown.



"This work, Composition, can be conceived as the view outside seen through a window of small and irregular panes. Each pane attracts to itself a small segment of the total view, mingles it with light of varying intensities, imparts to it a characteristic color and delivers it to the spectator as part of a crystalline re-structuring of the scene outside." ---------- Wow! If we first look at this painting as a series of abstract geometrical shapes and then shift our seeing to an outside scene as seen through a multi-pane window, we have two decidedly different paintings. This is a prime example of how a learned art historian can help us expand our appreciation of a work.



"The appearance of the first war aircraft with their exposed structure, tension wires, stretched fabric and insignia, is highly sympathetic to Klee’s later work and must surely have entered into his visual imagination, as in such work as Twittering Machine.” ----------- This is one of my very favorite Paul Klee paintings. There is such a sense of play and imagination at work here, as if a wizard waved a magic wand and four flesh-and-blood humans and their convoluted apparatus have been transported to a dreamlike transcendental realm, all with a touch of humor. Also, it’s great to know the artist had more than a casual acquaintance with WWI aircraft.



"This work, Fruits on Red, is painted on a red silk handkerchief used by Klee when playing the violin. The edge, and the fine quality of the thin material, dictate the style – few and fine lines, which enter from three sides, branches bearing a load of “fruits” whose relationship to the edge of the cloth is all-important in their placing." ---------- To my eye, the wavy edges add an airy dimension to the painting, the figures appear boundless, anything but boxed in. Also, the richness of the figures, particularly the fruit, is made all the richer by the texture and variation of the handkerchief’s pinkish-reds.



"With Carnival in the Mountains of 1924 we are in a different world of line. The teachable structure of his work has fallen into the background and Klee’s Gothic imagination, prominent in the early etchings, has re-asserted itself. Line is not used here for structural clarity but to create by cross-hatching a smoky, obscure space peopled by sinister beings.” ---------- There certainly is an aura of mystery in this painting, made all the more mysterious by the faceless being in the center with its mouth open and raised, the shape of a lobster’s claw. Curiously, the three most illumined parts of the painting are the mountains in the upper right, the road zigzagging along a obscure landscape in the upper left and an African-looking mask worn by a man or woman in the left foreground. Or, is that actually a face?



“Egyptian influence of a different kind may be seen in Ad Marginem where among Klee’s personal sign-objects disposed around the four edges of the work stands a wading bird straight from Egyptian painting. The huge sun-disc moreover and some of the signs themselves suggest a similar origin.” ---------- What strikes me about the wading bird is that it is upside down! Of course, upside down is a relative term – since this is an artwork, the force of gravity doesn’t have quite the force it does as if the bird were walking out in nature. Also, we really have to look to see all the various shapes. Above all, my eye is drawn to the space around the red sun and the sun itself, a sun so red inside that dark, circular (as if drawn by a compass) outline.



“In the brush paintings, the parallel lines become strokes of the brush, uniting line and color. Nature is no longer petrified, but intensely luminous, as Klee deploys the color against a dark ground, as in Cosmic Composition. ---------- Sheer Paul Klee magic. Trust your eyes, the more you look at this painting, even in reproduction, the more you will see.

( )

Swiss-German artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) - One of the most distinctive painters of the twentieth century.

This handsome coffee table book published by Phaidon Press contains forty-eight stunning full-page color reproductions along with a ten-page essay by art historian Douglas Hall on the life and work of artist Paul Klee. I must say I learned a great deal by reading what Hall had to say, particularly his observations on specific works, so much so that seven of the eight Douglas Hall quotes below address one of the artist’s paintings. I have also included my modest comments on what I find especially engaging about each work.

"Paul Klee was part poet and visionary, part disciplined, methodical craftsman and well-regulated bourgeois." ---------- There is no question Paul Klee possessed the two vital ingredients for creating great art: vision and mastery of craft. Many are the would-be creators who have approached their chosen form of art and have subsequently discovered the hard way that without both - vision and mastery of craft - creating quality art quickly becomes an uphill battle. Of course, Paul Klee was an artist with an extraordinary, keen eye and an exceptionally powerful vision.

"This self-portrait, “The Artist at the Window” is an early example of Klee’s use of watercolor as an independent medium and not an adjunct to drawing. There are outlines to the figure, but they are made of light coming from behind and are part of the form.” --------- So color and light take center stage, as in the sunlit window casting light on the artist’s pad; both window and pad accentuated and illuminated by the muted shades of brown.


"This work, “Composition,” can be conceived as the view outside seen through a window of small and irregular panes. Each pane attracts to itself a small segment of the total view, mingles it with light of varying intensities, imparts to it a characteristic color and delivers it to the spectator as part of a crystalline re-structuring of the scene outside." ---------- Wow! If we first look at this painting as a series of abstract geometrical shapes and then shift our seeing to an outside scene as seen through a multi-pane window, we have two decidedly different paintings. This is a prime example of how a learned art historian can help us expand our appreciation of a work.


"The appearance of the first war aircraft with their exposed structure, tension wires, stretched fabric and insignia, is highly sympathetic to Klee’s later work and must surely have entered into his visual imagination, as in such work as “Twittering Machine.” ----------- This is one of my very favorite Paul Klee paintings. There is such a sense of play and imagination at work here, as if a wizard waved a magic wand and four flesh-and-blood humans and their convoluted apparatus have been transported to a dreamlike transcendental realm, all with a touch of humor. Also, it’s great to know the artist had more than a casual acquaintance with WWI aircraft.


"This work, “Fruits on Red,” is painted on a red silk handkerchief used by Klee when playing the violin. The edge, and the fine quality of the thin material, dictate the style – few and fine lines, which enter from three sides, branches bearing a load of “fruits” whose relationship to the edge of the cloth is all-important in their placing." ---------- To my eye, the wavy edges add an airy dimension to the painting, the figures appear boundless, anything but boxed in. Also, the richness of the figures, particularly the fruit, is made all the richer by the texture and variation of the handkerchief’s pinkish-reds.


"With “Carnival in the Mountains” of 1924 we are in a different world of line. The teachable structure of his work has fallen into the background and Klee’s Gothic imagination, prominent in the early etchings, has re-asserted itself. Line is not used here for structural clarity but to create by cross-hatching a smoky, obscure space peopled by sinister beings.” ---------- There certainly is an aura of mystery in this painting, made all the more mysterious by the faceless being in the center with its mouth open and raised, the shape of a lobster’s claw. Curiously, the three most illumined parts of the painting are the mountains in the upper right, the road zigzagging along a obscure landscape in the upper left and an African-looking mask worn by a man or woman in the left foreground. Or, is that actually a face?


“Egyptian influence of a different kind may be seen in “Ad Marginem” where among Klee’s personal sign-objects disposed around the four edges of the work stands a wading bird straight from Egyptian painting. The huge sun-disc moreover and some of the signs themselves suggest a similar origin.” ---------- What strikes me about the wading bird is that it is upside down! Of course, upside down is a relative term – since this is an artwork, the force of gravity doesn’t have quite the force it does as if the bird were walking out in nature. Also, we really have to look to see all the various shapes. Above all, my eye is drawn to the space around the red sun and the sun itself, a sun so red inside that dark, circular (as if drawn by a compass) outline.


“In the brush paintings, the parallel lines become strokes of the brush, uniting line and color. Nature is no longer petrified, but intensely luminous, as Klee deploys the color against a dark ground, as in “Cosmic Composition.” ---------- Sheer Paul Klee magic. Trust your eyes, the more you look at this painting, even in reproduction, the more you will see.
( )