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Francesco Mazzaferro
The Diaries of Paul Klee
Part Four: Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter
[Original Version: April-June 2015 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 15) The critical edition of 1988, edited by Wolfgang Kersten |
The expressionist Klee (1910-1915)
First of all, a clarification is immediately due. In no
passage of the Diaries, Klee makes any
explicit statement of having joined Expressionism. Moreover, the image we have
of this art movement today is very different from what prevailed at that time.
Consider the Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider,
the Expressionist movement of Kandinsky, Marc, Jawlensky, Macke, Münter,
Feininger and others, to which he participated and for which he is often
reminded. To it Klee dedicates in the Diaries
no more than two (905-907) among more than one thousand paragraphs, and therefore
only two pages in more than three hundred ones. Moreover, in substance those
few pages are mere transcripts from a show review he wrote for a Swiss
periodical (Die Alpen). Moreover, the
passage in the Diaries mentions only Kandinsky and ignores all others.
A parallel with the memories of Nolde imposes itself: also
Nolde, out of a total of 800 pages, devotes only one page and a half of his memoirs
to the movement Die Brücke (The
Bridge) in 1906. Therefore, the autobiographical writings of the leading
painters of that time are aimed at narrating personal, and not collective,
paths of art expression. Paradoxically, the idea of an Expressionist movement
will be canonized by the Nazi exhibition on the so-called 'degenerate art' in
Monaco in 1937, the auctions of ‘degenerate art’ from German museums, organized
in Zurich and Lucerne in June 1939 (with which the Nazis collected cash, the
so-called 'Verwertungsaktion'- the action
to make money – acquiring means to finance the military attack against Poland
just a few months later) and the New York exhibitions of the second half of the
thirties [139]. After the war, West
Germany will identify that movement as the foundation for his artistic rebirth
and will accentuate all unitarian aspects of it.
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| Fig. 16) The auctions of Zurich and Luzern 1939 include Klee |
Klee has no team spirit. He writes that he
became a member of the Sema association of Alfred Kubin in 1912, but credits
his participation neither to himself nor to Kubin, but to Wilhelm Michel – an
art and literature critic, close to the Secession of Darmstadt – now fallen
into oblivion. He speaks of the Moderner
Bund of Hans Arp as the movement of the Swiss Expressionists (but he does
not say to be part of it). In terms of membership, he identifies himself with
the Neue Sezession of Munich in 1914,
which actually was more a trade association that an artistic movement, having
failed to become the unified grouping of all modern artists of Munich. So, Klee
is expressionist in the sense that the German art of that time - the years
before the First World War - is considered the true time of birth and
blossoming of German Expressionism.
In terms of terminology, Klee makes true
reference, in his Diaries, especially
to his proximity to Impressionism, even in times when his art style no longer
is such. Only at a late stage (1915) he dissociates explicitly himself from
Impressionism, speaking of another artist: "He is still an Impressionist, while I have only memories left in this
area" [140]. In fact, through his participation in the Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and the Sonderbund (the so-called 'Separate
league' - an expression taken from the history of Switzerland in 1848 - it is
the joint exhibition of Rhineland Expressionists, like Macke, and of the
Expressionist artists expelled from the Berlin Secession, like Nolde) in 1912
and through his collaboration with the Berlin magazine Der Sturm from 1914, Klee has become part of the hard core of the
German Expressionists (these are events that he still does not necessarily
mention in his Diaries).
The Diaries
reveal Klee’s uncertainties about the direction of his art in 1911: "The longer my production moves in a definite
direction, the less gaily it progresses. But just now something new seems to be
happening to the stream: it is broadening into a lake. I hope it will not lack
a corresponding depth. I was the faithful image of a part of art history; I
moved towards Impressionism and beyond it. I don’t want to say that I grew out
of it; I hope this is not so (...) In lucid moments, I now have a clear view of
twelve years of the history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self
with the big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now
gradually the re-emergence of a self without blinkers. It is good that one
didn’t know this in advance." [141] These retrospective reflections,
included as said before in 1911, could perhaps date back to 1920-1921. The
artist wants to reach a full capacity to grasp art creation: "I without blinders." He wants to
achieve this result as an individual, not as a member of a group. He welcomes
the fact that getting there is a continuous, progressive, and gradual process.
Speaking in the same paragraph in positive terms of Van Gogh and his way of
using the line in painting, he writes: "His line is new and yet very old, and happily not a purely European
affair. It is more a question of reform than of revolution." [142]
Klee and Van Gogh become heroes of gradualism, of continuity between past and
future, although both are now considered breaking artists.
Several factors – to which Klee makes
reference in the Diaries – explain his
gradual transition to an expressionist style: (i) the discovery of Cezanne in
1909, whom he immediately identifies as "my teacher par excellence, much more of a teacher than Van Gogh"
[143]; (ii) the meeting with Kubin in 1910 and the entry into the
aforementioned group Sema in 1911, "an
association of young artists ... with the purpose ... of reducing painting,
sculpture and design to their primary elements" [144]; (ii) the short
trip to Paris in 1912, during which he visits Hofer and Delaunay (and sees
paintings by Picasso, Braque, Derain, Vlaminck and Matisse); (iv) the
insistence on the importance of line as symbolic sign, taken as a constituent
element of the composition, a pattern inherited from previous years, which he
continues to consider as central to his artistic production; (v) the end of his
naturalist stage and the return to conceptual elements – it is still the legacy
of Ideenkunst, idealist art, which returns;
(vi) his acquaintance with Kandinsky and Marc in 1911 in Munich and the entry
into the Blaue Reiter in 1912; (vii) the dialogue and
cooperation with several art critics and dealers who support Expressionism
(Thannhauser, Walden, Goltz); and finally (viii) the transition from a tonal
painting to a colour-based one, on the occasion of his visit to Tunisia in
1914.
What is certain is that Klee has no longer
any sense of belonging to the circles of the old Munich Secession, the one founded
in 1898 in the Bavarian capital, where the artists of the Secession (including
his teachers Knirr and Stuck) are still active in his days. "Whenever a gallery-mad Munich artist or some
dauber [145] newly arrived in the
city has his erotic crisis, he composes an ‘Adoration of Woman’. You see a
female nude, a waitress, salesgirl, or the like, and kneeling in front of her,
Herr Painter, also naked. And yet the best erotic picture hangs in the
Pinakothek, Rubens’ “Bride,” with a feathered, velvet cap on her head, gloves,
and a pearl necklace - more beautiful than real pearls. A heightened portrait
of a woman. And, without actually mixing up with Sallies and Sues, one
constantly has the opportunity to treat people to this kind of childish stuff [146]
[147].” These are words of 1909. That
year, he writes: “Whereupon the local spring Sezession turns down all five of
my drawings.” [148] It is a mutual misunderstanding. On the other hand, just a
comparison between him and the old master von Stuck - on two works both
intended as a joke - shows what is now the distance.
The sense of distance is marked by the
aforementioned article of March 1912 in the weekly German-Swiss "Alpen", where Klee publishes
regularly reviews as an art critic (similar tones are found in paragraph 907 of
the Diaries). The tones are now openly
challenging and dismissive. "And how
has become all quiet here in Munich! Our courteous rector would never dare to
appoint as professor a member of the cooperative of artists without making sure
that his appointment is immediately followed by the nomination of a
co-professor at the Secession. The society controls itself; all equilibria have
to remain unchanged. Once persecuted, and then tolerated, now the Secession
lives regally in beautiful buildings. It's time for something new to happen!"
[149] The reference is probably to the Munich palaces of Stuck and Lenbach, in
a glamorous style, both now museums [150]. But his statement is not just a
modernist cry, á la Dada: every novelty must be based on folk and children
motives, but also on aspects of the ancient world, albeit all chosen
selectively, and the study of other cultures: "The novelty of that we experience and we create today has to be
discovered in its relationship with previous time and stages, folk art,
children art, in our case the Gothic and in the east Africa.” [151]
Not by chance a few years after the
expressionist poet Theodor Däubler (1876- 1934) will define Klee as "Futurism
tied to the traditional culture" [152]. Thus, someone who is always at the
same time linked to future and past. A definition that probably pleases Klee,
if he displays it in the Diaries. This does not mean, however, that there are
aspects of art (both past and recent) that Klee rejects. Among them
monumentality: after all, it is a rejection that becomes manifest already in
the days of his journey to Italy, ten years earlier. Here is what he writes on the
art of two dear friends, the German sculptor Hermann Haller (1880-1950) and the
German painter Karl Hofer (1878-1955), of whom we have already reviewed the memoirs: "For either one is
monumental or one isn’t. Just like Haller and Hofer, who also always want to be
monumental and only succeed in being weighed down by the past. But the
gentlemen are not disappointed and will never be. Poor happy souls". [153]
The reference to the primitives should not
be understood as a simple turn to the past. It expresses a minimalist attempt,
a sense of economy in the use of tools. "Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be
frugal down to the smallest detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of
confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn. Moreover, in order to be
successful, it is necessary never to work toward a conception of the picture
completely thought out in advance. Instead, one must give oneself completely to
developing portion of the area to be painted. The total impression is then
rooted in the principle of economy: to derive the effect of the whole from a
few steps. Will and discipline are everything. Discipline as regards the work
as a whole, will as regards its parts. Will and craft are intimately joined
here; here, the man who can’t do, can’t will. The work than accomplishes itself
out of these parts thanks to discipline that is directed to the whole. If my
works sometimes produce a primitive impression, this ‘primitiveness’ is
explained by my discipline, which consists in reducing everything to a few
steps. It is no more than economy; that is, the ultimate professional
awareness. Which is to say, the opposite of real primitiveness." [154]
We are still in 1909. The idea is being born of a composition based on the
combination and contrast of a few signs: "Tie small-scale contrasts together compositionally, but also large-scale
contrasts; for instance: confront chaos with order, so that both groups, which
are separately coherent, become related when they are placed next to or above
each other; they enter into the relation of contrast, whereby the characters of
both sides are mutually heightened. Whether I can already accomplish such
things is questionable on the positive side- and more than questionable,
unfortunately, on the negative side. But the urge is there. The technique will
develop in time.” [155]
These are years of experimentation. On the
one hand, in 1912 Klee translates into German an essay on light by Delaunay:
"Now Delaunay wrote and sent me an
article by himself about himself." [156] On the other hand, he
experiments with colours since 1910, but playing on subtle variations of tone,
both on cardinal (the caput mortuum)
and white: "Prepare a base for
painting by mixing paid powder and water containing glue and apply it like a
chalk base; this enables one to work on a base that will set off both light and
dark tones from the outset. For instance, caput mortuum. Against white, any light element appears dark from the outset, and by
the time one has managed to subdue the white, the whole thing has gone wrong.
Relativity of all values. This is why I was so pleased with the creation of my
black watercolours. First, applying a layer, I left the main points of light
blank. This extremely light gray layer gives at once a very tolerable effect,
because it appears quite dark against the blanks. But when I leave out the
points of light of secondary importance, and apply a second layer on the first
dried layer, I enrich the picture greatly and produce a new stage of logical
development. Naturally the parts left blank in the earlier phases remain blank
in the ensuing process. In this way I advance step by step towards greatest
depth, and consider this time-measuring technique fundamental as regards
tonality.” [157]
The Diaries
suddenly turn to describe innovative attempts in the techniques, all of which
concern composition attempts based on the encounter - in a very controlled form
– between tone and colourism, between line and chiaroscuro: "And now an altogether revolutionary discovery:
to adapt oneself to the contents of the paintbox is more important than nature
and its study. I must some day be able to improvise freely on the chromatic
keyboard of the rows of watercolor cups" [158] "Limited palette: 1. white, 2.black, 3. Naples
yellow, 4. caput mortuum, 5: and 6. Possibly also permanent green and
ultramarine. And the grays need watching! A warm gray: Naples yellow-black.
Cool gray: white-black." [159] "Launched a new offensive against the fortress of painting. First, white
thinned out in linseed oil as a general base. Second, color the entire surface
lightly by applying very large areas of different colors that swim into one
other and that must remain free of any effect of chiaroscuro. Third, a drawing,
independent of and substituting for the unformulated tonal values. Then, at the
end, some bass notes to ward off flabbiness, not too dark, but colored bass
notes. This is the style that connects drawing and the realm of color, a saving
transfer of my fundamental graphic talent into the domain of painting."
[160]
Among art experiments, he tries to use the
photographic technique of negative, translating light as black: "Light considered from the draftsman’s point
of view. To represent light by means of light elements is old stuff. Light as
color movement is somewhat newer. I am now trying to render light simply as
unfolding energy. And when I handle energy in black on a white surface, I ought
to hit the mark again. I call to mind the entirely reasonable black made by
light on photographic negatives. Moreover, the lesser thing is always made
special note of, so one imagines the situation of singling out a few highlights
on a white surface by means of lines. To heat up an untold quantity of energy
lines, because of these few highlights! That would be the real negative!” [161] "Am continuing to play with a dark notation for light-energy. My
interpretation, in the sense of a photographic negative, can yield thoroughly
positive pictorial results against the white background. In addition, I am
attempting to arrive at a rhythmically distorted composition while preserving
order. In studying this problem I resort to a mechanical device. Theoretically,
the pantograph might be set incorrectly, but the resulting distorted picture
can’t often be predicted. To get around this flaw, I thought of the following:
I drew an ordinary correct drawing on glass. Then I darkened the room and lit a
candle, though a gasoline lamp is best, because the size of the flame can be
easily regulated. I placed the glass pane at an angle between the source of
light and the new sheet of paper, which lies horizontally on the table. Result:
In the ‘correct’ image, we find AB, BC, CD, whereas the projected or distorted
image shows the reverse, A1B1, B1C1, C1D1. In each case I made the most varied experiment by altering the angle
of inclination of the glass plate until I hit upon the conversion of the image
most satisfactory to me. But each conversion was justified somehow by the fact
that the disproportioning obeyed a rule. In many cases, I finished off the
composition by applying the basic pseudo-impressionist principle: ‘What I don’t
like, I cut away with the scissors." [162]
Thus, Klee is developing a night hieroglyphic
language, based on symbols and signs. A semiotic language that only Alfred
Kubin, a follower of Klinger and promoter of the artist association Sema, is able to decipher. He turns to
Klee, buying from him (perhaps, the unique purchaser in that time) his designs.
"Kubin, my benefactor, has arrived!
He acted so enthusiastic that he carried me away. We actually sat entranced in
front of my drawings! Really quite entranced! Profoundly entranced!"
[163] For a deeply discouraged artist as Klee, it is like being born again:
"February [1911] I am starting a
precise catalogue of all the works that are still in my possession.” [164]
"Spring. All the things and artist
must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! And now I have become a
bureaucrat as well as by compiling a large, precise catalogue of all my
artistic productions ever since my childhood. I have left out only the school
drawings, studies of nudes, etc., because they lack creative self-sufficiency."
[165] It is Kubin who introduces him to Kandinsky. Unbelievable but true: they
live only a few meters away from each other, they studied in the same years
with von Stuck, but they do not know each other yet.
In 1913, Klee's art journey through
different styles leads him finally to the abstract composition. "[It] … is a real declaration of love toward
art. Abstraction from this world more as a game, less as a failure of the
earthly. Somewhere in between. The man in love no longer drinks and eats."
[166] Two years before, Kandinsky published his essay "On the Spiritual in
Art", which is the first manifesto to theorize abstract art in the
German-speaking world.
At this point - after reaching a new
compositional equilibrium based on the symbolic value of the sign - Klee decides
it is now time to introduce colour as an element of art composition. And he
does so under the blinding light of Tunisia, during a short trip that he undertakes
there with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. He realizes that this is an
important step for his work as a creator: "Graphic work as the expressive movement of the hand holding the
recording pencil – which is essentially how to practice it- is so fundamentally
different from dealing with tone and color that one can use this technique
quite well in the dark, even in the blackest night. On the other hand, tone
(movement from light to dark) presupposes some light, and color presupposes a
great deal of light." [167]
It is in Tunisia that colour becomes part
of a composition that combines the architectural element (he had discovered it in
Italy in 1901-1902) with the tonal one (the suffused chiaroscuro, learned from
Knirr, which had led to his passion for Leonardo). It is a completely spiritual
fusion of genres. "Tunis. My head is
full of the impressions of last night’s walk. Art-nature-Self. Went to work at
once and painted in watercolour in the Arab quarter. Began the synthesis of
urban architecture and pictorial architecture. Not yet pure, but quite
attractive, somewhat too much of the mood, the enthusiasm of traveling in
it-the Self, in a word. Things will no doubt get more objective later, once the
intoxication has worn off a bit." [168] "The evening is indescribable. And on the top of everything else a full
moon came up. Louis urged me to paint it. I said: it will be an exercise at
best. Naturally I am not up to this kind of nature. Still, I know a bit more
than I did before. I know the disparity between my inadequate resources and
nature. This is an internal affair to keep me busy for the next few years. It
doesn’t trouble me one bit. No use hurrying when you want so much. The evening
is deep inside me forever. Many a blond, northern moon rise, like a muted reflection, will softly remind me, and remind me
again and again. It will be my bride, my alter ego. An incentive to find
myself. I myself am the moonrise of the South." [169] "I now abandon work. 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 is. 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."(926 o)
If the discovery of colour in Tunisia is
revolutionary, it is immediately attenuated – once he returns to Europe – by the
need to ensure formal equilibria.
“In
my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its
genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very
quickly, and I have to look for new ways. It is precisely the way which is
productive - this is the essential thing: becoming is more important than being.”
[170] In fact, the Tunisian experience does not mark the transition to landscape
painting. Central to Klee’s creation remains the problem of the form and the compositional
equilibrium. “Genesis as formal motion is
the essential thing in a work. In the beginning the motif, insertion of energy,
sperm. Works as shaping of form in the material sense: the primitive female
component. Works as form-determining sperm: the primitive female component. My drawings
belong to the male realm.” [171] “The
shaping of form is weak in energy in comparison with the determining of form.
The final consequence of both ways of forming is form. From the ways to the
end. From activity to the accomplished. From the genuinely living thing to the
objective thing. In the beginning the male speciality, the energetic stimulus.
Then the fleshly growth of the egg. Or: first the bright flash of lightning,
then the raining cloud. When is the spirit at its purest? In the beginning.
Here, work that becomes (dual). There, work that is.” [172]
Klee
as a constructivist painter – 1915-1918 and the immediate following years
One can characterize the constructivist phase of Klee as the one complementing the centrality of the line as symbolic sign - a common feature in all its artistic phases – with the construction of the picture [173] as an additional pillar of the creative activity. It is an expansion of the aesthetic world of the artist that already started in Tunisia, where Klee seeks a synthesis between "the architecture of the city" and "the architecture of the painting." [174] Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy writes on the Tunisian watercolors: "Behind overlaps and shades of fluid colours, one feels a basic structure, which is based on a horizontal and vertical grid. While the cubists aim at the deconstruction of plastic forms (...), Klee oppose them compositions that - following the series of windows of Delaunay - are developed in a formal sense on the surface, but gain plasticity and depth thanks to the iteration and the chiaroscuro of the colours." [175]
It may seem strange that this note - all focused on an autobiographical publication ending, in narrative terms, with the military defeat of the German army in November 1918 - addresses the issue of Paul Klee’s constructivist phase. Constructivism develops in Russia only since the years of the Soviet revolution and spreads in the Weimar Republic thanks to Klee himself and to his teaching at the Bauhaus. It is therefore a movement of the postwar period. In reality, however, we know from the philological analysis that the texts of the Diaries are finalized and reviewed at a later stage, and that the decision not to publish them – at a time when the writings are ready - is of 1920-1921. Until then Klee writes and re-writes, adding or cutting off parts of their structure.
The World War years were a period of great
theoretical reflection and renewal of style for Klee. Already in 1918 he
prepared the first version of his Schöpferische
Konfession, his Creative Confession,
a brief but crucial programmatic writing that was published in 1920. So, they
are contemporary texts. The Creative Confession opens with the statement: Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder,
sondern macht sichtbar. That is: "Art
does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible" [176]. Here
is how this famous phrase is explained in the short essay by Klee, reproduced
here in the 1959 English translation by Norbert Guterman (used in a recent
publication of “Creative Confession and other writings” by Tate Modern in
2013): "Formerly we used to
represent things which were visible on earth, things we either liked to look at
or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible
things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated
case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent
realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning,
often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a
striving to emphasise the essential character of the accidental."
[177] "Art is a simile to Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as
the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic. The release of the elements, their
grouping into complex subdivisions, the dismemberment of the object and its
reconstruction into a whole, the pictorial polyphony, the achievement of
stability through an equilibrium of movement, all these are difficult questions
of form, crucial for formal wisdom, bur not yet art in the highest circle. In
the highest circle an ultimate mystery lurks behind the mystery, and the
wretched light of the intellect is of no avail." [178] "A tendency towards the abstract is inherent
in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairytale
quality and at the same time can achieve great precision. The purer the graphic
work – that is, the more the formal elements underlying linear expression are
emphasised – the less adequate it is for the realistic representation of
visible things. The formal elements of graphic art are dot, line, plane, and
space – the last three charged with energy of various kinds. A simple plane –
for instance – that is a plane nor made up of more elementary units – would
result if I were to draw a blunt crayon across the paper, thus transferring an
energy-charge with or without modulations. An example of a spatial element
would be cloud-like vaporous spot,
usually of varying intensity, made with a full brush." [179]
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| Fig. 17) The Creative Confession in the 2013 edition by Tate modern |
The Diaries
seem to be written so that the theses of the Creative Confession may be considered
as the natural culmination of twenty years of artistic activity: the text of
the Diaries describes the life of
Klee as being dominated by the overarching purpose of the construction, the semiotic
use of the line in a language of signs, of the search for balance between
opposites (to include both abstract elements and figurative elements) and the representation
of the transcending world. It is also the image that Klee propagates of himself
in 1920, producing biographical materials for the authors of the first three
biographies about him: Heinrich von Weederkop (Paul Klee, 1920, published in the
paperback series Junge Kunst - Young
Art - which explains in simple terms the contemporary art to the public of the
new Republic of Weimar), Leopold Zahn (Paul Klee. Leben / Kunst / Geist - Paul
Klee. Life / Art / Spirit, 1920) and Wilhelm Hausenstein, in the sophisticated
form of a novel-essay (Kairuan. Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee - Kairuan. A
story about the painter Klee - completed in 1920 but published in 1921). It is
also the image that - twenty years later - the American critic Clement
Greenberg consecrates to Klee one year after his death, in 1941, creating the
myth of Klee as a source of reference for all American minimalist abstract art
of the fifties and for the following conceptual art: "Ordinarily Klee does not create unity of design by a large scheme that
the eye takes in at a glance; this was the Italian, the Renaissance mode, in
which design always betrayed some affiliation with wall painting and
architecture. Klee’s feeling is ornamental rather than decorative, if the
distinction may be permitted-analytic rather than synthetic: he produces by intensification,
not by extension or projection; it is fission and subdivision rather than
addition. He works in small format, in the tradition of manuscript
illumination. His pictures are for very private possession, to be hung on near
and intimate walls. Because it is small, the picture demands close scrutiny,
confining visual attention to a compass within which the eye can travel with
least effort through intricate complications of detail. Yet the eye does not
make an instantaneous synthesis; with Klee design is, as it were, temporal or
musical. We are conscious of elements that are to be felt in terms of
succession as well as simultaneity. The all-important factor is line. Klee’s
line seems rarely to enclose a shape or mark a contour with definiteness; nor,
as a rule, does it vary in width or color value along a single trajectory. That
is, it has little plastic feel, so that it is hard to say whether it is heavy
or wiry, cursive or stiff, sinuous or angular; it is all these things and none.
At most it is scratchy. At times it is feathery. Adjectives do not fit the case
as well as verbs. Klee’s line indicates, directs, relates, connects. Unity is
realized by relations and harmonies that play across neutral areas whose
presence is more like an assumption than a fact. Because line – and color
too – are like disembodied elements that
do not adhere to bodies and surfaces, because there is an absence of weight and
mass, Klee’s pictures have a tendency sometimes – when the oscillating,
wavering, flickering movement that should unify them fails – to float apart into
mere groupings of pictorial notations.” [180]
Also here the caveat applies that Klee does
not formally proclaim himself constructivist in the Diaries. The definition of the constructivist thinking of Klee is
linked to his teaching at the Bauhaus, which starts in 1921. However, in a
number of passages in the Diaries, he
places the construction of the picture and the constructive-formal element not
only at the centre of his aesthetic reflection, but even - in the broadest
sense – of his existential considerations. So he says that the abstract
construction is for him a superior method - indeed the only way – to ensure the
representation of reality. To depict the visible world, it is therefore needed
to be able to turn away from it, going out from the universe of appearances and
entering into a new phenomenal reality. His constructivism is aesthetic and
formal, linked to the idea of abstraction, symbolized by the archetype that
there are two worlds, one real, and the other crystalline. The metaphor "I
am a crystal" is at the centre of the thought of Klee.
As demonstrated in a remarkable monograph
by Regine Prange on "Das Kristalline
als Kunstsymbol. Zur Reflexion des Abstrakten in Kunst und Kunsttheorie der
Moderne" [181] (The crystalline as artistic symbol. On reflection of
the abstract in the art and artistic theory of modernity) the crystalline world
is a typical image of the German culture of the late nineteenth century, which
originates in the aesthetic writings of Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), Adolf von
Hildebrand (1847-1921), Theodor Lipps (1851-1914), Alois Riegl (1858-1905) and
Bruno Taut (1880-1938). However, it is the Swiss art critic Wilhelm Worringer
(1881-1965), with the essay "Abstraktion und Einfühlung" [182] (Abstraction
and Empathy) of 1907, to transform the 'crystalline' (das Crystalline) or the 'regularity or abstract necessity' (abstrakte
Gesetzmäßigkeit und Notwendigkeit) into an interpretation
image of art history. The crystalline world, in his opinion, asserts itself
historically in the era of ancient Egypt, the late Roman and Byzantine world
and in the Gothic era.
 |
| Fig. 18) Abstraction and empathy by Wilhelm Worringer (1907), in the Piper edition of 1918 |
Worringer contrasts on the one hand the
so-called 'need for empathy' (Einfühlungsbedürfnis),
the psychological state that is the basis of Greek-Roman and Renaissance
figurative art (beauty as imitation of nature), and on the other hand the
'necessity of abstraction' (Abstraktionsdrang)
as a form of protection from the intrinsic terror for visible reality, an angst
to which everybody is exposed. The 'need for abstraction' is the urgency of
finding protection (Ruhepunkt) from
arbitrariness and apparent randomness (Willkürlichkeit
und scheinbare Zufälligkeit) of earthly things and of drawing happiness and
satisfaction (Beglückung und Befriedigung)
in absolute terms, by abstracting from the forms of this world. For artists who
inhabit this abstract world, it is not the nature to be the origin of things,
but their own subjective ego. Abstract artists are the creators of the world.
The crystalline painter, however, does not
escape the reproduction of nature as such: "As ... claim of the need for abstraction, we define the need to relate
the reproduction of the natural world with the elements of the purest
abstraction, or the geometric-crystalline regularity, in such a way as to give
the model the mark of eternity and of avoiding any temporariness and
arbitrariness." [183]. The reproduction of nature thus takes place
according to references that are defined as "inorganic", that is are
regulated by laws of the inanimate world, and therefore through 'crystalline'
methods. However, the Swiss art critic is not the first theorist of abstract
contemporary art. Worringer stops with ornamental art and Japonism in the late
nineteenth century. It will need to wait for three years later, with the Spiritual in art of Kandinskij of 1911,
to find a theorist of abstract art in the contemporary German world.
Klee expands the conceptual world of
Worringer. First, he fully identifies himself with the crystalline world,
becoming - as creator - his originator. He writes thus of himself as a crystal
cluster; or as a non-born, a being who lives beyond the visible world; and
therefore an already dead or an immortal. Second, he moves away from the idea
of simple geometric regularity and proceeds towards the more complex concept
of construction, based on the use of figurative components, of a new language
of significant signs for the image. Third, he assigns to this construction the
unique ability to capture the transcendent world, in fact the only existing
world. He becomes the hero of a not empathetic, cold, higher-than-the-mortal
world, and therefore marks a sharp break with the expressionist world, which
has its emotional framework in an almost pathological exaltation of feelings,
i.e. in the excitement vis-à-vis the real world.
In the Diaries,
the quotes by Klee on the crystalline world are centred around 1915, a year of
war, the last one before he is enrolled as soldier, and would seem to mean an
escape from the scary world of war. "The
heart that beat for this world seems mortally wounded in me. As if only memories
still tied me to ‘these’ things … Am I turning into the crystalline type?"
[184] "One deserts the realm of the
here and now to transfer one’s activity into a realm of the yonder where total
affirmation is possible. Abstraction.
The cool romanticism of this style without pathos is unheard of. The more horrible
this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, while a happy
world brings forth an art of the here and now. Today is a transaction from
yesterday. In the great pit of forms lie broken fragments to some of which we
still cling. They provide abstraction with its material. A junkyard of
unauthentic elements for the creation of impure crystals. That is how it is today. But then: the whole
crystal cluster once bled. I thought I was dying, war and death. But how can I
die, I who am crystal?" [185] "Certain crystalline formations, against which pathetic lava is
ultimately powerless." [186]
It is however not true that abstraction is
simply a flight, the product of the pessimism of reason. It is rather the
result of a psychological state. To the world of aesthetic conceptual
constructions beyond visible reality, Klee contrasts - like Worringer - the
world of empathy, assigning his closest friends, for example, Franz Marc and
Alfred Kubin, to such world. On Marc, just fallen in battle, says: "[Marc] is more human, he loves more warmly,
is more demonstrative. He responds to animals as if they were human. He raises
them to his level. He does not begin by dissolving himself, becoming merely a
part in the whole, so as to place himself on the same level with plants and
stones and animals. In Marc, the bond with the earth takes precedence over the
bond with the universe (I am not saying that he might not have developed in the
direction of the latter, and yet: Why, in that case, did he die?) The Faustian
element in him, the unredeemed. Forever questioning. Is it true? Using the word
‘heresy’. But lacking the calm assurance of faith. Often, toward the end, I was
afraid that he might be a completely different man some day.” [187] And on Kubin, he writes: " Kubin is a third case. He fled from this
world because he could no longer stand it physically. He remained stuck
halfway, yearned for the crystalline, but could not tear himself out of the
sticky mud of the world of appearances. His art interprets this world as
poison, as breakdown. (…) [Kubin] is
half alive, living in a destructive element in half, filled with vitality
destructive." [188]
On himself, however, Klee has very
different tones: "I only try to
relate myself to God, and if I am in harmony with God, I don’t fancy that my
brothers are not also in harmony with me; but that is their business. (...) My
fire is more like that of the dead or of the unborn. (...) Art is like Creation: it holds good on the
last day as on the first. What my art probably lacks, is a kind of passionate
humanity. I don’t love animals and every sort of creature with an earthly
warmth. I don’t descend to them or raise them to myself. I tend rather to
dissolve into the whole of creation and am then on a footing of brotherliness
to my neighbour, to all things earthly. I possess. The earth-idea gives way to
the world-idea. My love is distant and religious. Every Faustian is alien to
me. I place myself at a remote starting point of creation, whence I state a
priori formulas for me, beasts, plants,
stones and the elements, and for all the whirling forces. A thousand questions
subside as if they had been solved. Neither orthodoxies nor heresies exist
there. The possibilities are too endless, and the belief in them is all that
lives creatively in me. Do I radiate warmth? Coolness? There is no talk of such
things when you have got beyond white heat. And since not too many people reach
that state, few will be touched by me. There is no sensuous relationship, not
even the noblest, between myself and the many. In my work I do not belong to
the species, but am a cosmic point of reference. My earthly eye is too
far-sighted and sees through and beyond the most beautiful things. ‘Why, he
doesn’t even see the most beautiful things,’ people than say about me. Art
imitates creation. And neither did God especially bother about current
contingencies.” [189]
Here is what Michele Dantini writes on a picture
conceived in the form of polyphonic construction:
The Diaries as a retrospective construction
of identity: a constructivist Klee since the early days?
Can one really believe that Klee was a
constructivist avant la lettre? The
answer depends on what happened in 1920-1921, the year in which the final
version of the Diaries was drafted and
he decided nevertheless to abandon their publication.
End of Part Four
Go to Part Five
NOTES
[139] See Langfeld, Gregor – German
Art in New York. The Canonization of Modern Art Between 1904 and 1957, University of Chicago Press, 2015. In form of an article: How the Museum of
Modern Art in New York canonised German Expressionism:
[140] 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, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California
Press, 1964, 424 pages. The quotation is from paragraph 959.
[141] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 899
[142] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 899
[143] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 857
[144] Dantini, Michele - Klee, Milano,
Jaca Book Publisher, 1999, 224 pages. Quotation at page 57.
[145] The German term is “Kitscher”;
it is translated as “pompiériste” by Pierre Klossowki in 1959, and does not
appear at all in the Italian version of Alfredo Foelkel in 1960. Today it would
be easier to make reference to the concept of Kitsch than it was possibly the
case in 1964, when the English translation was produced.
[146] It is a difficult sentence to
translate. Klee mentions the Biblical expression “Krethi und Plethi”, which is
translated in English as Cherethites and Pelethites, and is meant here as the
equivalent of “Tom, Dick and Harry”.
[147] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 849
[148] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 853
[149] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (The early works 1888-1922), Munich,
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1979, 599 pages. Quotation at page 9.
[150] See http://www.lenbachhaus.de/ and http://www.villastuck.de/
[151] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (The early works 1888-1922), Munich,
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1979, 599 pages. Quotation at page 9.
[152] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 955
[153] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 912
[154] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 857
[155] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 921
[156] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 914
[157] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 871
[158] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 873
[159] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 878
[160] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 875
[161] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 885
[162] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 892
[163] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 888
[164] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 890
[165] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 895
[166] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 922
[167] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 928
[168] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 926 f
[169] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 926 k
[170] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 928
[171] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 943
[172] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 944
[173] Dantini,
Michele - Klee, (quoted), p. 53
[174] Dantini,
Michele - Klee, (quoted), p. 75
[175] Klingsöhr-Leroy – Cathrin, Paul
Klee, Munich, 2012, Klinkhardt und Biermann, 71 pages. Quotation at page 17.
[176] Klee, Paul – Creative
confessions and other writings, London, 2013, Tate publishing, pp. 32.
Quotation at p. 7.
[177] Klee, Paul – Creative confessions
(quoted), p. 11
[178] Klee, Paul – Creative
confessions (quoted), p. 13
[179] Klee, Paul – Creative
confessions (quoted), p. 7
[180] Greenberg, Clement and O'Brian
John, The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals, Chicago,
1995, University of Chicago Press, 340 pages. Quotation at pages 6-7.
[181] The text is available at: http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/files/78/kristalline.pdf
[182] Worringer, Wilhelm - Abstraktion und Einfühlung. Ein Beitrag zur
Stilpsychologie, Leipzig Weimar, Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1907. I read it in the
Munich edition published by Piper Verlag of 1918 (see also: https://archive.org/details/abstraktionundei00worruoft).
It is a text which experienced a very large success. The most recent German
edition is dated 2007. There are translations in Bulgarian, Czech, Catalan,
English, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Turkish. The latest English translation
is dated 2014: Worringer Wilhelm, Abstraction and empathy: a contribution to
the psychology of style, Mansfield Centre, Connecticut; Martino Fine Books,
2014.
[183] Worringer, Wilhelm – Abstraktion (quoted), p. 56. The English
translation is mine.
[184] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 950
[185] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 951
[186] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 953
[187] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 1008
[188] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 958
[189] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 1008
[190] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 1081
[191] Dantini,
Michele - Klee, (quoted), pp. 82-83
[192] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 429
[193] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 536
[194] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 681
[195] The Diaries of Paul Klee,
1898-1918 (quoted), paragraph 840
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