German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - Paul Klee, The 'Diaries'. Part Three: Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist

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German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - 7

Francesco Mazzaferro

The Diaries of Paul Klee

Part Three: Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist

[Original Version: April-June 2015 - New Version: April 2019]

Fig. 10) The German version of the original Diaries, printed by DuMont Publishers in 1957

Go back to Part One

In previous posts, I have tried to analyse the reasons for the world-wide publishing success of the Diaries of Paul Klee and to understand why they have been published only posthumously in 1957, although the draft was ready as early as 1920-1921. Later on, I offered my reading of the Diaries as a literary text of autobiographical genre, analysing four central themes: music, poetry, eroticism and abstraction. I am now setting myself the purpose of analysing the Diaries as a source text of art history. What do the Diaries tell us on the art creation of Klee and his idea of ​​art?

It is a difficult subject, which requires a journey in stages. The first stage (preparatory to the others) permits to explain that the Diaries are not only a memory tool, but also a real device to construct the art identity of the author. More than to the past, the Diaries are turning to the future. An interesting parallel with the memoirs of Emil Nolde, another main author of art literature in the German-speaking world of that time, explains that this feature belongs to both artists and is typical of the German world of those years, which is forced to be confronted with the most severe tragedies and traumas of history, compelling artists to an active management of their memoirs.

In this regard, I will try to give an accurate reading of the text, in order not only to record what Klee narrates on the stages of his progressive artistic development, but also to identify - with the help of the studies by philologists and art historians - the ways in which the artist uses the Diaries in order to draw a picture of himself totally geared to confirming his aesthetic thoughts in the early 1920s. There are references in the Diaries that are actually contemporary to the dates to which they refer, i.e. actually belong to the experience of those years. These elements are, among other things, witnessed by the synchronicity of issues and events mentioned in the Diaries with those cited in the enormous correspondence of letters which Klee addressed to the family, collected by his son Felix Klee and published by DuMont  in 1979 (1346 pages). The letters to his wife, Lily, for example, contain hundreds and hundreds of pages of reflection on art, music and poetry and are most likely the basis of which Klee has made use to compile the Diaries. But there are also notations in the Diaries that evidently have a retrospective nature, therefore have been written when the text was finally revised and often intend to reinterpret ex post the past. The chronology of the Diaries is precisely based on the simultaneous presence of synchronic and diachronic aspects.

Fig. 11) The first of two volumes of Klee's Letters to the family

I will differentiate between four phases of Klee’s art production between 1900 and 1920: (i) secession and symbolism; (ii) neo-impressionism; (iii) expressionism; (iv) and constructivism. I am not taking into account any subsequent development following 1920-1921, when the drafting of the Diaries is concluded.

Finally, I will try assessing the effectiveness of the operation put in place by Klee for self-representative purposes, comparing the Diaries with the three monographs, which were published on the artist exactly in 1920-1921. Those monographs marked the start of the criticism success, which made of him one of the global stars of contemporary art, before the Nazi persecution. All in all, this will be an instrumental reading of the Diaries as an instrument of self-affirmation of the public image by the artist, which does not affect their value, but helps explaining the role of art literature in the last century.

Biographical writings as an instrument of construction of art identity: the Klee-Nolde parallel

Each autobiographical work is a re-reading of an entire lifetime. In the case of the Diaries of Paul Klee, whose texts were completed between 1913 (at the earliest) and 1920 to 1921 (at the latest), that is in a phase in which the painter has already reached his full artistic maturity and has become a well-recognised representative of European art avant-garde, the writing has not only the goal of a critical confrontation with the past (1898-1918), but also that of a veritable construction - cautiously planned, almost on a theoretical level - of the new artistic identity of the painter. This is the perspective in which one should read the Diaries: not only in the logic of a passive remembrance but also in the active construction of an image for the future. And the latter does not only depend on the contents of the writing, but also on the skilful management of what is or is not published, on the revisions and the directed intervention by Klee with art critics and essayists.

This is a common point to the biographical texts of many artists, especially those whose personal history is not only characterized by the torments of a complex stylistic evolution towards an innovative language, but also by a difficult interaction with intricate and sometimes tragic historical events. For a country like Germany, which in the first half of 1900 lost two world wars and democracy, it is a common situation. A brief parallel examination between biographical writings of Klee and Nolde can help identify how the autobiographical writings serve the artists not only to explain their art, but also to manage their relationship with history and to establish a shared and reassuring image of themselves. The purpose if obviously to consolidate success through memoirs writing. Let us see the common ground between the autobiographical writings of the two.

First, both artists feel the need - as a central element of their autobiographies - to explain the birth of their artistic language as a sudden revelation, a precipitous and almost unexpected discovery. For Klee the critical step in the Diaries is dated 16 April 1914, while traveling in Tunisia: "I now abandon work. It penetrated 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: Colour and I are one. I am a painter.“ [71] For Nolde, the reference pages are in the second volume of memoirs, entitled Jahre der Kämpfe (The years of struggles). We are in 1906: "It was in mid-summer. The colors of the flowers attracted me irresistibly and almost sudden I was painting. My first small gardens paintings were born." [72]

The topos of the sudden and almost unexpected discovery of a new personal art language is beneficial to both. Both Klee and Nolde must explain to their contemporaries the reasons for which they develop a personal style only in a relatively late stage of their lives, and the image of a sudden revelation allows them to be very selective when they must describe their previous long and tormented route. Both for Nolde and Klee the memoirs are the story of a sudden and long awaited metamorphosis, which takes place after a long incubation. Today art historians cast doubt on this "revelatory" thesis and seek to identify, for both, the sources of inspiration that allowed them - dialectically - to identify their astonishingly innovative language through their entire art life, including the early decades.

Second, both have long (and unsuccessful) trainings behind them; indeed, their discovery of the artistic identity is not something belonging to the youth. In their autobiographical writings they can therefore claim to be 'young artists' (Junge Künstler), the term was then used to refer to the authors of the art renewal, but they are no longer young. Their memoirs display parallel pages on their family problems (how to make it to the end of the month, without the income from the sale of artworks), the contacts and the complex relationship they have with younger artists (who admire Klee and Nolde as art innovators, but at the same time feel to be members of a younger generation), and the important role that chance encounters with collectors and art critics of the Weimar Republic have in directing their artistic production, for better or for worse.

Klee is born in 1879 and ends the arrangement of Diaries between 34 (1913) and 40-41 years (1920-1921). Nolde is born in 1867: he discovers his artistic style at the end of the first five years of the new century, also at forty years, after a long professional experience in Switzerland (another parallel between the two, which explains why they both draw or depict humanized allegorical images - albeit very different ones – of Alpine mountains; in their memoirs, they both are pleased to remember their alpine hikings). Nolde’s pinnacle of success during the Weimar Republic is however 1927, with his Dresden retrospective exhibition in occasion of his sixtieth birthday (exhibition for which  Klee - who was also at the height of success - writes a famous page, calling Nolde the 'demon of his region', in this case northern Germany, a definition which is still very popular on him). In 1931 Nolde publishes the first volume of his memoirs (Das eigene Leben - My Life), when he is by now sixty-four, achieving some publishing success.

Third, although the need to narrate (and revise) the events of the past is obvious, in reality the needs of the present guide the pen of the two authors. In fact, with their writings they wish above all to consolidate their artistic accomplishment, in their later years. For Klee, this takes place in 1920-1921, just before the start of the experience at the Bauhaus in Weimar, once he has already overcome all uncertainties and identified his own pictorial language, after several experiences that have led him first to secession and symbolism, later on from neo-impressionism to expressionism, then to contacts with cubism, orphism and dada, finishing with constructivism. For Nolde, the need to strengthen the artistic success with biographical writings manifests itself in 1931-1934, when it seems possible, after so many failed attempts, to see the birth of a modern national art in Germany, purified from any influence of classicism and French art, a new art of which he wants to take the lead as a reference artist.

Fourth, for both of them the publication of the memoirs is a very complex birth: Klee decides in 1920-1921 - as already explained in a previous post - not to publish the Diaries by now prepared for the press. It is not impossible that the decision not to publish is due to the events of 1919, when Klee supports the attempted Soviet insurrection in Munich, two years after the October revolution in Russia. In fact, the Diaries are interrupted just before; they remain unpublished for a long time, encompassing the exile in Switzerland since 1933 because of the Nazi seizure of power and the rare incurable disease diagnosed in 1935, leading him to the relatively early death in 1940, when he is sixty one years old. The Diaries will be released by the son in 1957 only.

  

Even more complex is the genesis of the memoirs by Nolde. A good half of them is already written and published during the years immediately preceding and following the Nazi seizure of power. In particular, the second volume of memoirs (the aforementioned Jahre der Kämpfe), published in 1934, has the clear purpose to propose him as the driving force of a new modern, national and nationalist art in Germany, with the support of the new regime. To his amazement, however, after a heated internal debate decided by Hitler himself, the Nazis decide to censor stylistically Nolde as a 'degenerate artist'. His paintings are withdrawn from museums. The two volumes of autobiography are also prohibited and confiscated; Nolde terminates - but cannot edit - the third volume of his memoirs from the internal exile in the village of Seebüll, on the border with Denmark (he tries to send type-written copies of it to friends, but they are immediately identified and seized by Gestapo) and completes clandestinely the ready materials for the last volume in 1942, during the height of World War II. At the end of the war, of course, Nolde's memoirs cannot be published, since the artist has actually completed them in an attempt to redeem himself from what he sees as a misunderstanding by the Nazis, for publication after their hoped-for victory. Then begins a long and new phase to clean-up the text, which Nolde himself starts in 1949 at 82 years and his heirs continue in 1957, ending it only in 1967 (with the publication, in a highly challenged manner in philological terms, of four volumes). Later on (1976) the latter four volumes are condensed into a single tome (Mein Leben - My life), which is again a further opportunity for the Nolde Foundation to implement a new 'normalization' of the text in a post-Nazi sense, an attempt which should really be considered as unacceptable. In conclusion, the memoirs are used to build successive and even divergent images of Nolde’s artistic identity, following the evolution of political events.

Finally, also at the time of publication of the two texts in postwar Germany, the parallels in the management of autobiographical writings are important: both Klee’s Diaries Klee and Nolde's memoirs are published by the same publisher (DuMont, Cologne). In the same year, in 1957, appear for the first time the text of Klee and the main volume (in a newly amended version) of Nolde’s memoirs. For the types of the same publisher DuMont, the same German art critics (Will Grohmann 1887-1968 and Werner Haftmann 1912 -1999) promote Klee and Nolde in Germany and abroad as the art champions of the new post-war Germany, which searches for direct links with the avant-garde of the Weimar Republic, and wants to integrate itself in the movement of abstract art then dominating in the Western world. Klee and Nolde are thus represented importantly at the Venice Biennale in 1948, the first edition of Documenta in Kassel in 1955 and the exhibition German Art of the 20th Century at the Museum of Modern Art MoMa in New York, in 1957. That is where and when the global myth of German expressionism is born, and Klee and Nolde are among the champions of this myth.

Nevertheless, there are at least two important differences between Klee and Nolde. The first is political. Klee (who, still very young, has started his art studies with Heinrich Knirr, the later official portrait maker of Adolf Hitler) shows no nationalist or racial exaltation. To the contrary, Nolde is rather clearly Nazi and anti-Semitic oriented, and if his pages had been broadly known after the war in the original form, they would have created disconcert. Perhaps for this reason, the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll - which has in his possession all the texts of the memoirs, ready for release - long delays the publication of available writings and prevents any critical analysis of the memoirs for decades until recently (a critical edition does not yet exist; the letters of the years 1930-1940 have never been published; it is not even know what documentation is still available), while the Foundation Paul Klee in Berne promotes in the following decades the publication of all archives, a critical edition of all texts and a lively critical reflection not only on the Diaries and other texts, but also on their management by the Foundation itself.

The second difference relates to the world of ideas within which the two artists move. Klee is a refined man, with broad readings in art, philosophy, music, poetry, literature, etc., and able to interact with different cultures; in him the instinctive creative ability is associated with the desire to create an innovating language and a new aesthetic system, with clear references to music and philosophy, literature and poetry. To the contrary, Nolde is a man of very scarce readings (he claims to have read one single book in life up to the end) and devoid of theoretical capacities. He creates his works in an almost hypnotic trance, outside of any theoretical system.

In conclusion, through their intentional sense of direction the autobiographical writings of Klee and Nolde (which most likely did not know the texts of each other) have amended their own image of life and art, aiming to reinforce the success of the artist, guiding the reader through the many vicissitudes of complex personal events, of very slow and uncertain stylistic developments and absolutely dramatic historical events.

Paul Klee as a builder of his own artistic identity.

When we refer to the Diaries as a effort of construction (and not just re-reading) of the historical identity of the artist Paul Klee, we do not mean that he has manipulated the Diaries to hide his past, even if the issue of the real motivations of many choices of the painter remains unresolved, first of all their non-disclosure. Instead, it is quite credible that the Diaries elaborate a picture of the painter entirely in function of the aesthetic convictions that he had in the years of constructivism, when they were revised and completed. Moreover, the Diaries are scattered with retrospective paragraphs - most likely written during the final draft of 1920-1921 - in which Klee aims explicitly to draw some general aesthetic conclusions for the future from past experiences (in my view, the paragraphs 63,170, 411, 429, 527, 781-782, 831, 840, 842, 899 922 926k, 926 o, 928, 950, 951, 1008, 1081).

The intellectual identity construed in the Diaries (Klee as a man not occupied with history events and contacts with human beings, busy at looking for a timeless interpretative key to the world, immersed in developing a grammar of signs that he is only his own) is of course the conclusion of a long path only. Highly educated painter, he cannot but always confront himself with art, criticism and aesthetics of his time, and always tries an innovative synthesis between different positions. His artistic career is characterised by many diversions and variations, both on techniques and on aesthetic preferences. The Diaries, as we know them today, are very selective memoirs, both in the examination of his own works and in the narrative of his interaction with other artists, critics and collectors, and are likely to be the result of a continuous rethinking, started at the beginning of the 1910s of the last century, on how to address the public that he would read the writing for the first time.

This therefore explains why Cathrin Kligsöhr-Leroy, explaining the complexity of the painter's artistic identity to the public in a recent publication, speaks in 2012 of "Tagebuch als Selbstinszenierung" (Diary as self-representation): "You cannot answer these complex questions about the personality of Paul Klee. Even with the help of the Diaries started in 1898, since in these notations that have a private nature, which he collected during twenty years, Paul Klee aimed at a self-representation defined for a subsequent publication." [73] It is perhaps the main theme of the book on Klee's Michele Dantini [74]: Klee presents his story in a focused and selective way, adopting the perspectives of the modernist public and criticism, preparing to become the subject of this or that 'spiritual' art monograph: the decadent painters of the training period are now ignored, the same happens with the German-Roman masters; a wide coverage is given instead to van Gogh, Cezanne, and to the meeting with Kandinsky." [75] In a previous post, we have already noted an intuition of Giulio Carlo Argan, going into the same direction already in 1960:"The Diaries (...) are an autonomous literary work, with its construction that does not repeat at all the uniform succession of the calendar. There is a careful and well-studied choice of memoirs, a concatenation of facts according to a prepared and observed thematic (...)" [76].

It is only since 1979 - with the three exhibitions for the centennial of the birth - that critics realize how much Klee managed, even with his direct intervention with critics and curators, to control his public image. To the twenty years described in the Diaries is dedicated the Munich exhibition, supported by a formidable catalogue (with important contributions of Christian Geelhaar, Marcel Franciscono, Jürgen Glaesemer and Otto Karl Werckmeister), which discusses for the first time how much Klee’s prevailing image is also a consequence of the uncritical reading of the Diaries and other writings [77]. In the introduction we read: "In fact, one cannot help but notice the extent to which the interpretive literature - essays, monographs, etc... - has taken, as the sole criterion of interpretation, the image that Klee himself proposed of his person and of his artistic career." [78] So, it turns out that the Diaries themselves, far from clarifying the relationship between Klee and his time, fed "the legend, which becomes a real cliché, of a creator who produced all by himself and that has developed its own style and its themes without external influences worthy to be mentioned." [79] It is a topos that Klee himself reinforces: "The thought of having to live in an epigonic age is almost unbearable. In Italy I was almost helplessly under the sway of this thought. Now I try to ignore all this in practice and to build modestly, like a self-taught man, without looking left or right." [80]

That image of Klee as a brilliant and isolated artist, impossible to pigeonhole into any movement of his age, and the discoverer of the language of contemporary art, is still central to the retrospective of 1970, also held in Munich [81], entirely dedicated to the study of correspondences between pictorial work and aesthetic thought of the artist, according to a logic inaugurated with the first retrospectives of the postwar period in Berne (1940) and Basel (1941). Nine years later, the message of the exhibition celebrating the centenary is quite different: "An amount of previously unknown or so far unnoticed details is here considered and could change the image of Paul Klee as a painter. He appears - this is the result – to have interacted much wider and directly with the artistic and cultural environment of his time than we thought to date, and can be interpreted less and less as a special and isolated case, but - albeit throughout the originality of his work - as a typical member of a specific Western European culture, if we reflect on his manifestations in terms of images and words." [82]

  

The duality of the Diaries and the duality of Klee’s art

Fig. 12) The essay by Michele Dantini 1999. On the cover, Girl with Doll, 1905

To the dual nature of the Diaries also corresponds a duality in the art that Michele Dantini – a true connoisseur of the German aesthetic theories of those decades (think, for example, of his studies on Malerei und Zeichnung – Painting and drawing – by Klinger) - recognizes immediately in his essay on Klee: it is the contrast between naturalism and realism (or better yet, in modern terms, between spontaneous and conceptual art), between art creation as a reflection of romantic inspiration or as a translation of an elaborate system of thought, between art as a reflection of 'clairvoyance' (think of the German tradition of painters-prophets) and art as 'canonical order' [83]. The overcoming of this duality is a constant theme in Klee’s writings, since the secessionist beginning (expressed then in an attempt to "combine the satire and the ideal or the beautiful") [84], throughout the neo-impressionist phase (with the attempt of a 'painting through design') and finally in the constructivist phase from 1915-1918, when it takes the shape of a search for balance between abstraction and figurative art.

On some pages of the Diaries, the theme of duality is expressed in programmatic terms. So, in a 'retrospective' paragraph he writes: "Now, my immediate and at the same time highest goal will be to bring architectonic and poetic painting into a fusion, or at least to establish a harmony between them." [85] He adds, with regard to architectural painting: "Today, I would say the constructivist element" [86] This element has for him a strong classical roots: "In Italy I understood the architectonic element in the plastic arts – at which point I was groping toward abstract art."  [87] More precisely, the source is "A Greco-Roman antiquity (physis), with an objective attitude, wordly orientation, and architectonic center of gravity." [88] The architectural element in painting has a fundamental importance to understand that nature is made up of an intrinsic system of mathematical rules: "When I learned to understand the monuments of architecture in Italy, I won an immediate illumination. Although these are utilitarian structures, the art of building has remained more consistently pure than other arts. Its spatial organism has been the most salutary school for me; I mean this in a purely formal sense, for I am speaking in strictly professional terms." [89]

The other end of duality, poetic painting, has its origins in a "Christianity (psyche) with a subjective attitude, worldly orientation, and musical center of gravity." [90] The duality is therefore not only a characteristic of the Diaries and of the style of Klee, but also of his existential nature itself.

The end result - in Klee - is a painting which at the same time wants to be the result of a purely intuitive creation and the expression of a specific visual language encoded by the artist. It is an art in which the abstract conceptual aspect is actually the tool to detect and describe the deeper reality of nature, and therefore his abandoning of figurative effects is never absolute. Klee aims therefore at preserving a balance that makes of him one of the least radical among the abstract artists and one of the most systematic among the creative ones.

This balance is a result which the artist reaches through many stages, which are listed here of course in a very simplified way: (i) his participation in the Munich Secession and in the world of symbolist art, as a student and young artist until 1908-1909; (ii) the neo-impressionist phase, between 1908 and 1910; (iii) the expressionist phase, between 1910 and 1915; and the start, between 1915 and 1918, of the (iv) constructivist phase.

Klee as secessionist and symbolist (1902-1908)

Back in Berne from Italy at the end of the study period, Klee is acutely aware of his technical shortcomings and the weaknesses of his preparation: "I’m going to do everything that I still haven’t done." [91] "Everything that used to be foreign to me, at the rational procedures in my profession, I now beging to resort to after all, from necessity, at least as a matter of experiment. Apparently I am becoming perfectly sober and small, perfectly unpoetic and unenthusiastic. I imagine a very small formal motif and try to execute it economically." [92] The research for small dimensions and the rejection of perspective are a logical consequence of his dislike for each monumental art, and the interest - clear in the preferences shown during the Italian stay - for the mosaic and the bas-relief: "I project on the surface; that is, the essence of the subject must always become visible, even if this is impossible in nature, which is not adapted to this relief style. The absence of foreshortening also plays a crucial part in the process. (...) For I have discovered a very small, undisputed, personal possession: a particular sort of three-dimensional representation on the flat surface. (…) I am my style" The tool is the pencil, the genre is drawing.

The interest in small dimensions and the aversion for the foreshortening explain why Klee does not follow the road opened by Lovis Corinth, then a popular artist, all focused on a monumental classical painting as basis for the development of modern German art. Instead, he is clear influenced by the idealist aesthetics of Fiedler, his Ideenkunst (Idealist art), which interprets art on the criteria of form.

In the German-speaking world where Klee is growing as a young artist, the aesthetic thesis of Max Klinger, theorized in Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and drawing) is very successful. Klinger assigns to painting the role of the joyful and faithful representation of nature, while drawing is given the task of conceptual art. Drawing is however able, at the same time, to discover the tragedy of the world and also to identify its deeper meanings. This corresponds to the world of poetry and music, tragedy and opera, the world which is the closest to the soul of Paul Klee.

In truth, the young Klee explicitly rejects the aesthetics of Klinger in the Diaries [94] and even more in the Letters to the family [95], but paradoxically his entire aesthetic activity during his youth is still expressed only in the context of drawing, the art genre that owes to Klinger - as an artist and art theorist – its success in Germany across the two centuries. Consider for instance the cycle of etchings by Klee entitled Inventionen (Inventions), which he numbers as Opus I, just following the example of Klinger. They are produced in Bern between 1903 and 1905, on his return from a three-year stay in Monaco and six months in Italy. Creating cycles of incisions is a genre that in those years ensures artistic and economic success to many German artists (see my post on the fortune of Klinger’s aesthetics in Germany). But Klee does not manage to achieve an economic success.

The attempt of Klee is to use drawings to combine two genres (painting and satire) that, in those years, belong to two different universes. In fact, it is a generous but hopeless attempt. If indeed experiences of drawing at the highest degree of sophistication are born in that period in Munich (think of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus and the Jugend literary magazine, from which the famous term Jugendstil is derived), Klee is never accepted there. Satire is still marked by an invisible boundary between painting and caricature. To contaminate official painting and genres which are considered minor is unconceivable. Pop Art does not exist yet. 

Fig. 13) Cover page of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus 1903

Klee himself, after a few years, writes in a letter to his wife on June 12, 1906, reflecting on his failure: "My etchings have [...] the mistake of being processed as images and to have at the same time the meaning of epigrams. It is the union of pure painting with pure graphics. [...] From now onwards my task will be the division of art and graphics, and the full development of both fields. The pure art has already turned to impressionism and the graphics is going to do it."  [96]

That of drawings with a satirical background is a very popular genre at the end of the century (think of the Belgian Félicien Rops and, among those who attend Munich studies in the same years as Klee, of the Italian Alberto Martini, iconographically close to Klee [97]). As he writes to his friend Hans Bloesch in 1898, Klee originally aspires to become a satirist, not a painter: "You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I would like to deride humanity, nothing less. And this with the simplest means, in black and white. At the same time - oh blasphemy - I would like to attack our Lord adequately." [98] The Diaries contain several titles of drawings made before the trip to Italy (1901-1902), but all destroyed by the artist, probably after returning from that journey. After a few years, however, satire basically does not satisfy him any more: "Unfortunately the poetic suffered a great change in me. Tender lyricism turned into bitter satire. I protest. If only I survive, a saucy voice cries in me.” [99]

Why does Klee only trust drawing and avoid painting, if he attempts such a complex synthesis between genres? Why does he renounce to color, i.e. to the most innovative aspect of the contemporary art which is being born in those years (Nolde, Kandinsky, Kircher, Marc)? And again: Why does he renounce to color, if he has studied with reference artists for painting in Munich and Germany in those years? In fact, he learns drawing with the portrait and landscape painter Heinrich Knirr, and painting with Franz von Stuck, the leader of the Secession in Monaco. Still very young in 1900 – Klee produces, even before leaving for Italy – some Symbolist landscapes of the valley of the River Aare in the style of Walter Leistikow, a genre painter of great success for its landscape views in Brandenburg and around Berlin. In 1903, Klee steps up efforts on colour, but he is not satisfied: "Serious color studies of nudes and heads. Only as practice and first training. Very strict determination of color values through water color. On top of it, some oils, simply for blending. The results are quite unattractive, little of importance to be hoped for here. This month of February is devoted to color. I painted many nudes from nature and even the portrait of a head, my syster’s!" [100] Indeed, he is quite disheartened, and drawing is a means for him to overcome what he terms, in German, as a depression, and in the US version is called 'minor successes': "Towards the end of the month I prepared engravings; first, invented appropriate drawings. Not that I want to become a specialist now. But painting with its failures cries out for the relief of minor successes. Nowadays I am a very tired painter, but my skill as a draftsman holds up." [101]

The choice in favor of the design and the renunciation to any use of color can be explained both by technical reasons as well as by personal taste considerations. Let us weigh the combination of factors.

First, Klee is not confident about his use of color. No doubt, the teaching imparted by von Stuck does not satisfy him: "To be a student of Stuck sounded good. In reality, however, it was not half so splendid. Instead of coming to him with a sound mind I brought a thousand pains and many prejudices. In the realm of colour I found it hard to progress. Since the tone provided by mood predominated strongly in my mastery of form, I sought to find as much profit as possible here at least. And, in this respect, a great deal really was to be gained at Stuck’s. Naturally I was not the only one, at this time, to be deficient in the realm of color. Later, in his monograph, Kandinsky passed a similar judgement on this school." [102] "Stuck thought he could advise me to turn to sculpture; should I wish to paint again later, I would find good use for what I learned. Proof of the fact that he understand nothing about the realm of color." [103]

Klee has difficulties with oil painting, and perhaps for this reason decides to assign a secondary role to color. He also has uncertainties in the execution of anatomy. "I work with tempera, using pure water, to avoid all technical difficulties. In this way everything goes slowly. Two or three days for a head, a day for each arm and each leg, a day for the feet, the same for the waist, and every appendage a day each (…) In my case the color only decorates the plastic impression." [104] On the technical difficulties of the young Klee I am referring to the analysis in the catalogue of the 1979 Munich exhibition [105].

In terms of taste, then, Paul does not like at all the world of classical painting, whether Italian or German. While he is departing for Italy, he proclaims in his Diaries his disinterest in humanism [106]. He corrects this statement after the journey but – at least in terms of contemporary paintings – the only result of the Italian experience is a reconciliation, albeit indirect, with German artists of the previous decades (the so-called Roman Germans) who had left their artistic traces in the Italian capital (Von Marées, Feuerbach, Hildebrand). In Naples he discovers at the same time the "decorative color" of Pompeian art and the frescoes by von Marées. "In the Museo Nazionale I was fascinated most of all by the collection of painting from Pompeii. When I entered I was profoundly moved. The ancient paintings, in part wornderfully well preserved. And this art is very close to me at present. I had anticipated the treatment of silhouette. The decorative colors. I take all this personally. It was painted for me and dug up for me. I feel invigorated." [107] "Upstairs in the library the frescoes of Marées. A half-year before, the subject matter would have been quite strange to me, but now I can feel my way into it. The presentation deeply and sincerely appealed to me." [108]

Finally, Klee is well aware of the commercial risks of producing paintings, in a situation in which the public does not follow his art. Therefore (in line with what Klinger explains very well in Malerei und Zeichnung) the reasons why etchings and other printing techniques are often used to express innovative visions is because, from a financial standpoint, they are much less costly to purchase for buyers and offer the possibility they are sold to more people.

But it would be a mistake to consider that the one of Klee - with his cycle of Inventions - is not a meditated and well-thought attempt to produce a fully-fledged art genre. If satirical design is also a flight from the failures of painting - especially a reaction to his inability to fit into the great currents of contemporary art – it has the advantage of still being in his eyes a kind of complete artistic genre, which he is firmly ready to defend. "I have now reached the point where I can look over the great art of antiquity and its Renaissance. But, for myself, I cannot find any artistic connection with our own times. And to want to create something outside of one’s own age strikes me as suspect. Great perplexity. This is why I am again all on the side of satire. Am I to be completely absorbed by it once more? For the time being it is my only creed. Perhaps I shall never become positive? In any case, I will defend myself like a wild beast." [109] "For satirists too like to be free and independent.”  [110]

On November 5, 1898 he writes to his father [111] that his satirical caricatures are not just modern, but completely original. In the Diaries, he comments about satire: "Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or, else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average men as against the possible heights that humanity might attain." [112]

Fig. 14) Cover page of the literary magazine Jugend 1903

Source: http://digi.uni-heidelberg,de/diglit/jugend1903_1/0008

The cycle of Inventions - satirizing caricatures with a high ambition as painting - shows completeness in terms of both content and form, something which his contemporaries cannot perceive.

From the first point of view (content), the designs of the series Inventions are products of their time, for instance with the discovery of personality diseases of of the newly psychiatry (think of Perseus and the Comedian). Dantini defines the cycle of etchings as "Studies of Hysteria" [113]. The deformation of the body, far from being simply a caricature, also reveals very important issues (the bisexuality of certain figures, the deliberate sexual ambiguity of certain positions) that later will be fully developed by expressionists like Schiele and Kokoschka. From the formal and iconographic standpoint, Dantini explains then that the drawings are at a crossroad between the iconographic models of the Italian art most appreciated by Klee (the mosaic, the late Roman Empire, the early Christian, Gothic) and the symbolist-secessionist (Böcklin, Hodler, Stuck) (think of the Virgin in the Tree, Old Phoenix and Perseus). As Marcel Franciscono writes, Klee aims simultaneously at solving two formal problems: "First, how to provide an overall artistic structure to the concentration of sharp details, all described in a detailed form? (...) How to reconcile such general structure (which defines the picture as a work of art) with the epigrammatic nature of his jokes?" [114]  Klee tries to solve these problems with the drawing. This is such a bold attempt of a synthesis between different genres and styles, which contemporaries will eventually not understand.

Here is what Klee writes in his Diaries on Perseus: "Printed at last, and I am satisfied. This new Perseus has dealt the sad dull monster Misfortune the death blow by cutting off its head. This action is reflected by the physiognomy of the man whose face functions as a mirror of the scene. The underlying marks of pain become mixed with laughter, which finally retains the upper hand. Viewed from one angle, unmixed suffering is carried ad absurdum in the Gorgon’s head added on the side. The expression is stupid, rather, the head robbed of its nobility and of its crown of snakes except for some ridiculous vestiges. Wit has triumphed over Misfortune (a more redefined sequel to the ‘Comedian’)." [115]

The cycle Inventions is produced in 1903-1905 in Bern, where the artist still lives with his family of origin. As early as August 1905 he writes: "In my eyes, the engravings lie before me as a completed Opus One, or more exactly behind me. For they already seem curious to me like some chronicle taken from my life." [116] If he wants to have a future, he must depart from the provincial capital of Switzerland, where he maintains himself as a professional musician in the local symphonic orchestra. His reference place for art remains Munich, where he has studied for three years. Since 1898, it is the home of the first secession and is often called the city of 5000 painters. To the Bavarian capital Klee moves in 1906. The same year he marries the Munich pianist Lily Stumpf. The wife finances the family, with concerts and piano lessons. He guards the son Felix, born in 1907, and deals with the domestic affairs (in the Diaries this situation, very odd for the time and lasting for years, is not mentioned explicitly). In the art field, however, the Secession does not offer, however big perspectives, and Klee remains isolated in Munich. The etchings, albeit presented with the support of the name of von Stuck, are already rejected by the magazine Jugend [117] in 1900, and not accepted by the magazine Simplicissimus in 1906. Klee says: the director "after conferring with his colleagues, asked –with all due respect- for things that might fit Simplicissimus better. Since I am in no way a virtuoso, and don’t wish to become one, I unfortunately was forced to drop the idea altogether -so pleasing from the economic point of view- of becoming a cartoonist of Simplicissimus." [118] The cycle of the Inventions is exposed, again on the recommendation of von Stuck, at the exhibition of the Secession in 1906 in Munich. Klee hopes in a success (it's a time of great renewal of German art; in the same year, in Dresden, the expressionist group Die Brücke is launched, which he never made reference of, however, in the Diaries). Again, it does not work: in an exercise of shame, the Diaries mention only: "As I look back on those days, I rate first in importance the display of the engravings at the Sezession show; less important was a show (…) in Frankfurt am Main" [119], where - alas – he has sold only one image. Two years later, his drawings are on display at the Secession exhibitions, both in Monaco and in Berlin in 1908. It is again a fiasco, which perhaps marks forever the failure of years of secessionist and symbolist experimentation.

What remains of this phase is the fundamental role of the line as a symbolic sign, both in the semantic and aesthetic sense. Klee believes that simply to use drawing to portray nature is in fact impossible; because of his ability to create signs, the artist also generates nature and is superior to it, he does not simply reproduce it: "Things are not quite so simple with ‘pure’ art  – he writes back in July 1905 – as it is dogmatically claimed. In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. In this sense I shall never be a pure artist as the dogma defines him. We higher creatures are also mechanically produced children of God, and yet intellect and soul operate within us in completely different dimensions."  [120]

Klee as a new-impressionist (1908-1910)

The progressive transition from Secessionism to New-impressionism is marked by a new interest in nature. Klee does not change, however, completely art genre and does not abandon drawing for oil painting: instead, he  experiences a middle ground solution, which does not separate, but melts, painting and drawing: Dantini speaks of a specific "painting through drawing" and writes: "He is attracted by the graphic meaning of  sign, the process aspect of form making, the techniques of alteration of the model, ultimately 'style' as opposed to 'nature' - Whistler and the Japanese masters are certainly a more significant references to him than Monet." [121] Klee’s Naturalism must therefore be qualified. Dantini continues: "He aims at transforming this or that piece of landscape in an ornamental 'hieroglyphic' – as he admits himself -, he draws with broken and feverish stretches, almost struggling with the hourglass, he practice accentuated compositional imbalances and interprets the sign, despite its transience, as a structurally independent instrument." [122]

The approaching march to Impressionism itself is slow and cautious. The encounter is not immediate: in 1904 - whilst he is still finishing the series graphics of the Inventions – he receives a book of William Blake as a gift from a colleague Karl Hofer and numerous photographs of works by Goya from his wife. He comments without any enthusiasm: "It was more necessity than impulse, more a willingness to lay myself open to these things that were signs of the new times. For I may have been too much out of touch, after all!” [123] In June 1905 Klee decides to catch-up and leaves for a short two-week stay in Paris.

In Paris Klee is intrigued - but not convinced – by the figurative world of the impressionists (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Sisley, Renoir) and has no contact at all with any of their successors. In fact, his interest is still to the previous generation: Whistler, Puvis de Chauvannes, Millet, Corot. Moreover, already in 1902 he does not speak of impressionism with much enthusiasm: "To train my thought, I wrote down a few didactic remarks about art. Dry theoretical compromise between strict and impressionistic painting [124]. And again in April 1905 he writes: "The fragmentariness which is typical of so many Impressionist works is a consequence of their fidelity to inspiration. Where it ends, the work must stop too." [125] In fact, even in 1905, he does not realize that what he sees in France is already a fruit of the past and that Paris is about to produce a volcanic modernist explosion [126].

To the Paris trip in 1905 Klee devotes only a few pages in the Diaries, but his encounter with Impressionism - though late - is nevertheless important. If he has first attempted a synthesis between ancient art and the world of secession, based on drawing design as a conceptual element of art, his contact with Impressionism imposes to him the theme of nature. We are therefore going back to the original duality between naturalism and realism, typical of the Germanic world a few years earlier: Klee is now shifting from the camp of realism (i.e. idealism) to that of naturalism, from conceptualism to natural beauty. However, he never adheres to the schools of German impressionism (like those of Liebermann, Slevogt and Corinth). In Munich he discovers in those years - thanks to the Swiss designer Ernst Sonderegger, who has contacts with the Group of XX in Brussels - the art of Ensor in 1906 and Van Gogh in 1907, and only afterwards, he sees exhibited the works of French post- expressionists (Bonnard, Vuillard) in 1908.

Of Van Gogh Klee greatly appreciates the letters. "Van Gogh is congenial to me, ‘Vincent’ in his letters. Perhaps nature does have something. There is no need, after all, to speak of the smell of earth; it has too peculiar a savor. The words we use to speak about it, I mean, have too perculair a savor. Too bad that the early Van Gogh was so fine a human being, but not so good as a painter, and that the later, wonderful artist is such a marked man. A mean should be found between these four points pf comparison: then, yes! Then one would want to be like that oneself." [127] On painting he manifests instead reserves: "His pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified." [128]

He is perhaps tempted by the color of Van Gogh, but he does not want to place it at the centre of his creation: "Sometimes color harmonies take hold of me, but then I am not ready to hold them fast, I am not equipped" [129]. Instead - as we shall see - this short phase is characterized by alternating developments: "I swing like a pendulum between the sobriety of my recent tonal studies from nature, which I continue here by chasing though the suburbs with portfolio and easel, and the fantasticality of Ensor." [130] These all are developments at the search of his own style "He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i.e., cannot do something else. The way to style: gnothi seautón (know thyself)." [131] On tonality, he exults:" Learned how to differentiate tonality (with or without colors) from the coloristic. Got it!" [132] This means that the interpretation of neo-impressionist painting is all entrusted to monochrome tonal variations (or at most to white and black) and not to the contrast between colors. "The changeover was complete; in the summer of 1907 I devoted myself entirely to the appearance of nature and upon these studies built my black-and-white landscapes on glass, 1907/1908.” [133] And finally:" ... I studied the tonalities of nature by adding layer upon layer of diluted black watercolour paint. Each layer must dry well. In this way a mathematically correct scale of light and dark values is the result. Squinting facilitates our perception of this phenomenon in nature" [134].

Here - for example - what he writes on the painting on glass: "The glass picture 1908/56,’The Balcony’. … This led to a successful work, which shows a particular freshness of form. I had already seen the picture a couple of days earlier, from my kitchen balcony, naturally, which was my only way of getting out. I was able to free myself from all that was accidental in this slice of ‘nature,’ both in the drawing and in the tonality, and rendered only the ‘typical’ through carefully planned, formal genesis. Have I really come out of the jungle now?? This kitchen balcony, the empty lot, the Hohenzollernstrasse. A prisoner’s view in several directions." [135]

However, Klee soon captures the limits of this experience: "The chief drawback of the naturalistic kind of painting – to which I continually return for thorough orientation and training – is that it leaves no room for my capacity for linear treatment. Actually no lines as such exist in it; lines are merely generated as frontiers between areas of different tonalities and colors.” [136] And instead, Klee would not be Klee - since the beginning of his artistic experience - if the line was not assigned the role of an "independent pictorial element." And he himself indicates - in a page with a clear retrospective feauture - the subsequent development of his art in the expressionist sense: "A work of art goes beyond naturalism the instant the line enerts in as an independent pictorial element, as in Van Gogh’s drawings and paintings and in Ensor’s graphics. In Ensor’s graphic compositions the juxtaposition of the lines is noteworthy." [137]

"In fact I am beginning to see a way to provide a place for my line. I am at last finding my way out of the dead-end of ornament where I found myself one day in 1907! With new strength from my naturalistic études, I may dare to give form to enter my prime real of psychic improvisation again. Bound only very indirectly to an impression of nature, I may again dare to give form to what burdens the soul. To note experiences that can turn themselves into linear compositions even in the blackest night. Here a new creative possibility has long since been awaiting me, which only my frustration resulting from isolation interfered with in the past. Working in this way, my real personality will express itself, will be able to emancipate itself into the greatest freedom."  [138]

End of Part Three
Go to Part Four 

NOTES

[71] All English texts of the Diaries are taken from the US edition: The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918. Translation by Pierre B. Schneider, R.Y. Zachary and Max Knight, Berkely and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1964, 424 pages. The quotation is from paragraph 926 o.

[72] Nolde, Emil – Jahre der Kämpfe (Years of the struggles), Berlin, Rembrandt Verlag, 1934, pp.262. Quotations at page 93.

[73] Paul Klee. With a contribution by Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Munich, Klinkhardt & Biermann, 2012, 72 pages. Quotation at page 11.

[74] Dantini, Michele - Klee, Milano, Jaca Books Publisher, 1999, 224 pages. Quotation at page 8.

[75] Dantini, Michele, Klee, (citato), p. 8

[76] Klee, Paul – Diari 1898-1918. Introduction by G. C. Argan. Translation by Alfredo Foelkel. With a note of Felix Klee, Milano, Il Saggiatore Publisher, 1960, xix plus 427 pages. Quotation at page ix.

[77] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (The early works 1888-1922), Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1979, pages 555.

[78] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 10.

[79] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (citato), p. 13.

[80] Klee Paul – Diari 1898-1918, 2012 (quoted), paragraph 430.

[81] Paul Klee 18979-1940, Monaco, Haus der Kunst (Casa dell’arte), 10 ottobre 1970 – 3 gennaio 1971. 67 pagine di testo e 233 figure fuori testo.

[82] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 13.

[83] Dantini, Michele - Klee, (quoted), p. 9.

[84] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 37.

[85] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 429.

[86] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 429.

[87] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 429.

[88] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 430.

[89] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 536.

[90] Klee Paul – Diari 1898-1918, 2012 (citato), paragrafo 430.

[91] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 453.

[92] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 425.

[93] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 425.

[94] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 733.

[95] Klee, Paul – Briefe an di Familie (Letters to the family), DuMont, 1979. See the following passages: "Knirr wants to make of me in every way a Klinger. I find it a curse"(p.35). “The Beethoven Klinger is a scandal. I hate this brutal careerist. He fits perfectly with the empty Viennese Secession" (P.239)

[96] Mentioned in Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 50.

[97] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 34.

[98] Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 47.

[99] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 429.

[100] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 485.

[101] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 512.

[102] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 122.

[103] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 140.

[104] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 374.

[105] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (citato), p. 39-44.

[106] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 171.

[107] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 391.

[108] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 390.

[109] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 294.

[110] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 341.

[111] Mentioned in Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 47.

[112] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 420.

[113] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (citato), p. 39-44.

[114] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 53.

[115] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 582.

[116] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 693.

[117] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 122.

[118] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 779.

[119] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 781-782.

[120] Klee Paul – Diari 1898-1918, 2012 (citato), paragrafo 660.

[121] Dantini, Michele - Klee, (quoted), p. 13.

[122] Dantini, Michele - Klee, (quoted), p. 13.

[123] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 578. 

[124] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 416.

[125] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 615.

[126] Of a different opinion is Marcel Franciscono, who sees influences from Picasso and Cezanne in the allegory  “Symbolic pessimism of the mountain” of 1904. See Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (quoted), p. 55.

[127] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 808.

[128] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 816.

[129] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 808.

[130] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 798.

[131] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 825.

[132] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 811.

[133] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 831.

[134] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 840.

[135] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 813a.

[136] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 842.

[137] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 842

[138] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 842.