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Francesco Mazzaferro
The Diaries of Paul Klee
Part Five: The Success of Paul Klee
and his first three critics in 1920
and his first three critics in 1920
[Original Version: April-June 2015 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 19) The first essay on Paul Klee, released in 1920 by Heinrich von Wedderkop |
The autobiographical writings as a tool to influence
criticism
As explained in
previous posts, the Diaries of Paul
Klee were not published during his lifetime. However, in 1920 he produced some
syntheses of them for the perusal of three art critics who, shortly before, had
contacted and communicated him their intention to publish an equivalent number
of monographs on his art creation. The autobiographical material becomes a - more or
less effective - tool, depending on the circumstances, to try to influence
their essays. Let us briefly analyse how things went, proceeding in
chronological order of publication of the works. Thus, we are starting with
Heinrich von Wedderkop (1875-1956), followed by Leopold Zahn (1890-1970), and
we are concluding with Wilhelm Hausenstein.
Heinrich von Wedderkop
The first
publication on Klee is a short pocket book of Henrich von Wedderkop [196] of
only 16 pages of text, but with many illustrations in black and white, and with
a biographical section of four pages, prepared with the assistance of Klee, who
helps him to fill a brief summary of his own life, entitled "Biography of
Klee as directed by the artist." In that text, the critic presents Klee as
the interlocutor of both German and French avant-garde artists. "In touch with all the radical forces of
Germany and France, Klee strengthened his artistic will [Wollen: following the Nietzschean
aesthetic theories of Alois Riegl, in those years a difference was often made
between the artistic impetus on the one hand, defined as Kunst-Wollen, i.e. the firm willingness to produce art, and the Kunst-Können, or the mere knowing how to
produce art] and progressed to reach a
certain unity of style. Especially Matisse helped him discover his own colourism.
He owes to this great French painter [editor's note: Matisse is however
mentioned only once in the Diaries,
at paragraph 910] the fundamental
knowledge of everything on which the new painting. "(p. 15)
The publication
of von Wedderkop is the first one with an important circulation destined to
Klee. It is printed as part of the series 'Young
Art', which between 1919 and 1933 provides broad dissemination on
contemporary art to the public of the Weimar Republic. The 52 illustrations in
black and white include only one engraving of the secessionist period (The comedian), 5 drawings and
watercolors of the "painting through drawing" style of the
neo-impressionist phase and then watercolors, drawings, lithographs and
gouaches since 1914, and especially new works created in 1919 (but none of
1920). The author (who has also published texts on Cezanne and Munch in the
same pocket series), wants however to represent Klee as a unique artist, not
classifiable within the boundaries of any of the artistic movements of the
time: he is not an expressionist or Cubist, but even not a post-romantic with any nostalgia of the secessions. "Paul Klee
is the typical case of an artist who can exist without theorems and, quite
independently of them, going along completely innovative roads. Once can find
in him - instead of the often required simplicity, primitivism, or even simple roughness
of means – a pronounced refinement, a soft tenderness and even a conscious
relationship with culture, and in general a horror for today’s theorists. At
the same time, I cannot mention in Germany none else who has to say such new things.
He can be conceived as a non-romantic artist, for what he includes as
absolutely necessary and for the way in which he exhibits the form: an
exception, since in him have disappeared any nostalgia and the other
requirements of romanticism." [197]
Here follow some
phrases to differentiate him from Kandinsky (in Klee we would seek in vain the
spiritual aspects of the theorist of abstract art, who authored 'The spiritual in art' [198]), from
Cubists ("he grew up on the actual
terrain of forms" [199]) and from any socially committed artist ("is distinctly individualistic"
[200]). Wedderkop adds that in him there is never any prospective construction,
there is no monumentality and that the only possible interpretation is based
exclusively on forms and colours. "The
more this art is far from usual, the more vital is in its own world. Here
shapes and colours are continuously dissolving in each other. Pictures become
all the more vital as the usual laws of inertia are suspended. And yet everything
fits. In reality, there is not a single point that rests in these pictures, but
there is instead an eternal coming and going of colours and shapes. Klee loves
the infinite line, its eternal continuation, its twisting, its branching and
finally its return, to fill the circle and to keep any relationship with the
living world away." [201] These
are issues that are abundantly present in the Diaries (the distance from the living world) and which suggest that
the author could have perhaps had access to the author's original reflections.
It is not clear whether, at the time when the text is completed, the text of
the Creative confession [202] has
already been published. Otherwise, Klee does not make any reference in the Diaries or the Letters to the family [203] to Weddenkorp. In the text of a
(probably never sent out) letter to Wilhelm Hausenstein, another of the 1920 art
critics, Klee did not hesitate to say: "Nevertheless, I consider the not very important initiative of a certain
Dr. Wedderkorp to write about me as mere advertising ... " [204]
However, these might be not entirely sincere words, as we shall see.
Leopold Zahn
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| Fig. 20) Photography of the first, not numbered, page, of the text of the essay by Zahn |
Leopold Zahn's
monograph [205], printed by the publisher Gustav Kiepenheuer in Potsdam, is
in fact the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition organized by Hans Goltz
in Munich in May-June 1920. Goltz is Klee’s contractual agent from 1919 to
1925. It is no coincidence that he is mentioned nineteen times in the
collection of letters to family members, especially during the war years,
because the revenue that Goltz guarantees is one of the main sources from which
the maintenance of the family depends. The retrospective exhibition of Munich
marks the establishment of Klee as reference painter in the new Weimar Republic, where artistic success depends more on markets than on official
institutions. The gallery (and library) of Goltz is one of the Munich
avant-garde centres, and the references to it in the Diaries are frequent:
still in Wilhelmine Germany, the Goltz library-gallery hosts the second
exhibition of the Blue Rider in 1912
[206] and that of the Hans Arp’s Moderne Bund of Expressionists from Switzerland in 1913. In the same year, Goltz
becomes an art dealer with the support of Klee [207], and is able to sell many
of his works during the difficult years of the war [208].
The text of 87
pages of Zahn contains on page 7 a photograph of a handwritten text of Klee
which is presented as a reproduction from unpublished diaries, with two famous
phrases "I cannot be understood at
all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn.
Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close
enough. Am I heat or cold? Beyond all this fervour, this is inexplicable. In
the distance, I am the most devout. In this world I am sometimes sadistically
happy. They are only shades of that thing. Priests and Pharisees are too little
devotees to see, they just irritate themselves." [209] The son Felix
has added this aphorism in the collection of the poems of his father and let
carve the first part of it as the epigraph on the grave.
In fact -
despite the wording "from the diary
of Paul Klee" contained on page 7 of Zahn’s book – those words are not a quote from the Diaries, although there are quite
similar passages [210] . Klee has hand-written these words just for Zahn and
has allowed their photographic reproduction for the book. This reveals a high
degree of complicity between Klee and Zahn. The 1988 critical edition of the Diaries contains, in fact, the full text
of a summary that Klee prepares for the art critic, covering the years
1902-1906. The "life and development"
section of Zahn’s monograph also reveals embarrassing similarities with the
pages of the previous biographical section in the monograph by von Wedderkop
(for example, the same joint reference to the German and French avant-garde art, and to
Matisse), likely a sign that some section of both may verbatim equally arise from
the same input of Klee. There are some conceptual differences though: if
Wedderkop speaks of the horror proven by Klee against any theory, Zahn
emphasizes instead the theoretical and programmatic role of Kandinskij and the
importance to Klee of the thought of Delaunay. In the work published by Zahn
are also frequent references to Chinese art theorists and philosophers, the
anti-rationalist nineteenth-century German Romanticism, the Faustian myth,
Oswald Spengler, all themes which inaugurate the reading of Klee as a real art
philosopher (think of the following essays by John Sallis [211] in the US
and Paolo Cappelletti [212] in Italy).
The
interpretation of Zahn is that Klee is a cosmic, mystical and abstract painter,
in full correspondence with many pages of the Diaries, and in particular of those referring to 1915, in the third
diary. Most of the 57 reproduced works are however of a later date: 13 are from
1920, 11 from 1919 and 12 from between 1916 to 1918. Also for this reason,
philologists like Geelhaar [213], and Werckmeister [214]) have come to the conclusion
that those pages of the Diaries do
not really relate to 1915, but are probably written during 1920-1921.
In his monograph,
Zahn refers to various passages of the Creative
confession, the programmatic text of Klee just released: "Cosmic feeling of the world. What should we
understand? It is a psychological situation in which a person experiences the
transcendental reality in the same way as the earthly reality. (Empirical
reality sub-species of infinity). Paul Klee: "Art is a simulation of
creation. It is always an example, as the terrestrial is a cosmic example
". This corresponds to: 1. a relativization of the objective world, the
one which is accessible to senses and rationally understood; 2. a rejection of
rationality as a higher instance of understanding; 3. a preponderance of the
spiritual (spiritual as antithesis to understandable)." [215]
"The aim of today's art is to make
visible the regular laws of the cosmos. Among the artists, some make them
visible through things (those same things, moreover, when they are freed from
any accidental nature, transform themselves radically). Others renounce instead
to the tools of things. They are called abstract artists. What distinguishes
Klee from other abstract artists is the imaginative power of his imagination.
He owes to it those serene visions of new worlds, new situations, new bodies
where the essence of the new is implemented at a metaphysical level,
abstracting from the concrete world of this side’s world. The mystical wisdom
guides the artist to abstraction. The childhood fantasy composes in a language
abstract, fascinating and never heard fairy tales, even more fantastic than
each eastern sherazad, because they are transcendent. This illustrated book of
the cosmos could be also called a mystical book of fables." [216]
Wilhelm Hausenstein
Among the three art
critics of 1920, the most important is Wilhelm Hausenstein (1882-1957): his
relationship with Klee and the controversy he had with him on the issue of the
composition have been the subject of much attention, both in aesthetic-stylistic
[217] as well as in more exquisitely historiographical terms. It is no
coincidence that the novel-essay "Kairuan
oder eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters",
completed in 1919-1920 but published only in 1921 by the publisher Wolff in Munich,
is the only one of the three writings on Klee which is still on the market today.
The text was reprinted in 2014 (exactly one hundred years after Klee's journey
to Tunisia). Kairuan is in fact one of the cities visited by Paul Klee in 1914.
The full title of the novel-essay is "Kairuan
or the history of painter Klee and a discussion on the art of this era".
On the cover, however, the title is only "Kairuan, a history painter Klee".
In the Diaries, Klee quotes Hausenstein for the
first time in 1914, as the leading sponsor of the New Secession, the association of the avant-garde Munich artists of
which the Swiss artist (unlike Kandinsky and Marc) becomes part on the same
year [218]. In his Letters to the family,
the first reference is on 4th June 1913 [219]. In the Diaries, Klee notes in 1914 to have sent
some watercolours made in Tunis, the same year, and welcomes that Hausenstein
was able to let publish one of it in the magazine Ganymede [220]. For his part,
Hausenstein writes on the art of Klee in terms of "corruption sublimated to the point of childishness." Although
this expression is used with a positive connotation (in those years, the
children's art is re-evaluated everywhere in the art world; think of the
exhibitions on the art of children, organized by Alfred Stieglitz in New York
between 1912 and 1916), the judgment appears ambiguous. [221]
In his essay “Für die Kunst” (For art), written at the
end of 1914, Hausenstein states that the concluding year represents the
pinnacle of German art (thanks to the abstract formalism anchored to
intellectual speculation and the distance from worldly concerns) and questions
with some concern whether the war events will allow artists to keep the
necessary distance from real things. Among the representatives of formal
abstraction there are Klee and Kandinsky. "The war is something monstrously concrete. The art with which we went
to the threshold of the war was not concrete. In the summer of 1914, we lived a
moment when art had blossomed to a seemingly unheard of abstract formalism.
The artist’s experiences were no less vehement and intimate than ever. However,
these experiences were entirely rooted in a speculative view of form which was
all but severed from anything tangible and substantial (...) every affect,
every situation was translated into pure form equivalents (...) Will the war
cancel this tradition?" [222] We know that Kandinsky and Jawlinsky -
citizens of the Russian empire - will be expelled from Germany. In 1916 Marc
dies. In Munich, Klee will therefore remain the only interlocutor of abstract
art who can continue to be considered as his counterpart by Hausenstein.
Probably because
he does not fight in the trenches, but he works in the rear and in the
privileged position of the logistics support to military aviation, the soldier
Klee can continue (and even intensifies) his abstract-formal considerations, his
readings and the pace at which he carries out its work. In November 1917, Klee
rejoices at the news that Hausenstein has become a critic and editor of a
Munich newspaper, the Münchner Neueste
Nachrichten [223]. Until then,
that newspaper had been, with Fritz von Ostini, one of the bastions of
aesthetic conservation [224]. In March 1918, he reads there a positive review
on his graphic work and that of Kubin. He exults in his Diaries: "The miracle of
someone appreciating my work has taken place" [225]. In a letter to
his wife of the same day, however, he expresses some doubts about the too
convoluted style of the art critic [226]. And in fact the text of Hausenstein is
not without reservations about Klee: "This
[positive] judgement is intended to be an entirely personal one; it does not
oblige anyone [to agree with it]. In giving my assessment of Klee in
particular, I remain conscious of the fact that I am neither able nor willing
to give a generally valid norm of judgment. His drawing is so subjective and so
full of fundamentally problematical features that it is impossible to match it
against objective, general criteria of art." [227] On the other hand, Hausenstein
is a referential critic for Klee and the latter does everything he can to be
able to follow his writings even from the barracks where he works (in January
1918, Klee can read, as a soldier, the new essay entitled "Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart" (The visual arts of our time)) [228]. In
July 1918, he informs the parents that Hausenstein plans to write a book about
him [229]. In August, however, the first conflicts between the two become manifest. In the Diaries, we read: "Hausenstein’s
essay, no matter how flattering to me, has aroused me to opposition."
[230] The German critic has in fact described him as "the champion of
German cubism" and defined the creative process as "destruction and regrowth", using a terminology
certainly in vogue in those years, but not in line with the thinking aesthetic of
Klee (oriented to constructivism, not to deconstruction). In addition, the
judgment of Hausenstein is again not without reservations: "However, the subjectivity of Klee's art is so
hard to capture that it threatens to put an end to the nonnegotiable concept of
the public existence of art." [231] In fact, Hausenstein believes that
Klee has not yet fully understood how to compose a painting, and the latter
responds by producing pictures of close constructivist nature, to try - in vain
- to convince him otherwise. The exchanges of view do nothing but emphasize the
differences, and by then the relationship has deteriorated. In 1919,
Hausenstein opposes on the Münchner
Neueste Nachrichten to Klee’s appointment at the Academy of Stuttgart (in
fact, he will not get that place) because he considers him insufficiently
prepared on theoretical terms [232]. On January 4, 1921 Klee writes to the mother
that he has received the first copy of Hausenstein’s book, which he defines
much nicer than the preceding book by Zahn, already in the bookstores [233].
However, after that day, there will be no longer any reference to Hausenstein
in the correspondence to the family.
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| Fig. 21) The version of Hausenstein’s novel-essay published in 2014 |
The sequencing
of the publication of the text of Hausenstein is very complex and really
emblematic of the difficult and sometimes intrusive relationship of Klee with
criticism. Hausenstein works at the book since 1918. In May 1918, Klee promises
him to prepare biographical materials [234]
and in 1919 drafts two long and detailed summaries of the Diaries (both published in the 1988
critical edition of the Diaries: on
the whole, the two texts occupy not less than 34 pages). The two summaries are
(at least partially) different among each other in content and are written in a
totally dissimilar style. In some cases, they both diverge from the final
version of the diary, and philologists derive from this a new confirmation that
Klee is reviewing the text in those months, preparing the publication of the
autobiography [235]. It is likely, however, that Klee feels some elements of
concern: the book which is being finalised is certainly produced by a reference
critic for contemporary art, who, however, has alternately expressed praises
and reservations on him. Klee is still in a precarious economic situation, and
needs absolute success.
Hausenstein
works throughout 1919, informing him in November that he has found a publisher
[236], and completes the manuscript in June 1920, but just at that time the
book of Zahn is released, of which he was unaware. We now know, thanks to
Werckmeister, what actually happened: intentionally, Klee avoids informing
Hausenstein on the monograph of Zahn. The two art critics, among other things,
hate each other: Hausenstein is a Marxist, deeply disappointed by the support
of the expressionists to the world war, who in April 1920 publicly repudiates
the artistic movement and since then becomes a detractor of it. Zahn, tied to
the world of the big bourgeoisie, attacks Hausenstein with an article that
accuses him of apostasy against modern art. Hausenstein is marginalized and
resigns from the Münchner Neueste
Nachrichten, the newspaper of which he used to be art editor. When the book of
Zahn is released, he realizes he has been tricked on the timing of the
publications, thanks to a conspiracy to which Klee participates.
The critic must
be furious with Klee, to whom he reproaches the priority given to Zahn. The
1988 critical edition of the Diaries
contains in fact a third text, entitled "Materials for a letter to Wilhelm
Hausenstein". It is a response, perhaps never sent, to a previous letter
received from Hausenstein (reproduced in part by Werckmeister). The art critic
had bitterly complained that the painter has given precedence to the works of
Wedderkop and Zahn, while his text was already ready, and clearly attributed
this choice to a pure speculation of an economic nature. Put simply, Klee would
have rather preferred to revise the texts of Zahn and Wedderkop, respectively
related to his agent Goltz (to whom he is bound by a multi-year contract) and
the powerful critic Paul Westheim, rather than to honour the agreements with a
Marxist critic now out of favour. Since Klee, only few months before, had taken
politically the side of the Spartacus league, this was seen by him as a further
painful betrayal.
The (perhaps
never sent out) answer by Klee does not deny that in Hausenstein’s arguments
there may be some element of truth: "I
am well aware that my work is gradually acquiring a certain monetary value, and
that benefits from some speculation in the nascent market." [237] In
addition, he admits that there may have been an intrigue between Goltz and
Westheim, but claims to have discovered it only with hindsight. He claims then his
full neutrality between all his critics: "I myself try to have a totally neutral stance in this activity. I
paint, others are trading and advertising. It is the reason why there are art
dealers and I make use of their services, because I am not able to take care of
these aspects." [238] Hausenstein probably accuses him of providing
material support to other authors, and to plan the publication of even further
publishing initiatives for the coming months (in particular, the edition of the
illustrations for Voltaire's Candide, completed in 1911 but never published).
Klee recognizes the risk of duplication between the various monographs
dedicated to him, but says he attaches to the two other already released monographs
the value of mere advertising and says that the work of Hausenstein will have a
different calibre. Then he announces that he even wants to publish a large
autobiography (it is nothing but his Diaries)
and to be looking for a publisher [239]. As mentioned above, the latter
publication will never take place, if not in 1957. Despite the compliments and
all the defensive arguments, Klee attempts to distance himself from a very
specific aspect of the book being finalised by Hausenstein, aspect of which he is
made aware only in October 1919, when Hausenstein announces him that is writing
a "half-novel." [240]. Klee’s
reaction is very cold: "You yourself
prospect a kind of novel. You are, in the first place, the author."
[241]
It must be said
that the volume of Hausenstein is not only really surprising in nature, but
even an extraordinarily difficult, at times enigmatic and even incomprehensible,
reading. Written in a complex German inspired by the style of the Sturm und Drang of the early nineteenth
century, it consists of a completely fictional first part (introduction and
three chapters) with a dreamlike subject, it becomes a detailed biography in
the second part (ten chapters) which, of course, is based on summaries prepared
by Klee himself, and concludes with three chapters on the critique of art
production of the painter. We have already seen in other posts - think of the
autobiographical novel Legends from the
life of an artist (Legenden aus dem
Künsterleben) written by Lovis Corinth in 1909 - that during the era of
symbolism it is common practice to combine literary genres. Hausenstein seems
to adopt the preferences of the previous generation.
In the first
part, the novel starts with the unexpected arrival in Munich of an anonymous
artist (Paul Klee of course) close to a red church of Venetian style, the
Church of St. Ursula in the Schwabing district. The artist is torn between
literature, music and painting, he lives in the mid of the real and the
transcendent world, between heaven, earth and the underworld. He is a lonely
magician, maybe even a philosopher or a cleric. Certainly, he is an individual
who translates his existential insecurity in his complex artistic identity: the
result is an equal formal insecurity in his creations, but also an inability to
precisely define the concepts: "It
seems that no known form may contain him. The concepts that come to his mind
are lost in smoke. All usual aggregates depart - in his hand - from their own
context: person and thing. How can it be one or the other? He is not a hero, as
heroes are in the old books. He is a new particular being, who not only dissolves
trees, demons, evil animals, giants and dwarves, but above all dissolves
himself. (...) Subject and object; finally also ‘here’ and ‘beyond’ lose any
borders and meaning." [242]
This individual
is suddenly ordered to represent and describe an ambiguous and unspeakable
show, that starts with painters and poets who live in groups, around the
church, for days, weeks, months, years and decades, in a state of suspension
and without ever coming inside the church. Until in May bells announce that the
king of Italy has declared war to the emperor of Austria (possibly an allegory
of 24 May 1915, with Italy's entry into World War I?). Then they all enter into
the church, living at first in a community of mutual admiration, until the
enchantment is interrupted. It is the moment in which the surfaces are
transformed into depth and the depth in surfaces and finally all are equal
among each other.
Our hero then
moves into a cave, and produces, in a miraculous way, fantastic forms:
crystals, spheres and gemstones. No longer being in the church, however, he is
now a heretic. Then, now street and square become central elements, even if
they are places where subjects and events are dissolved. They are not infinite,
but not-finished and defined places, where the lives of men and things elude
any certain size. In this so profane dimension, the only religious feeling can
be born in the soul of individuals. In fact, after the painter has been
rejected from the church and from the street, his only refuge is the house in
the centre of his spirit, which becomes the centre of the world. His address is
in the Ainmillerstrasse, just the street where Klee lived between 1906 and
1921. This is the moment when Jawlensky and Kandinsky appear in the story,
which, in the next chapter, turns into a veritable biography, very faithful to
the autobiographical materials of Klee.
It seems clear
to me that Hausenstein’s narrative, in its clear dreamlike component,
tentatively describes, in terms of symbols, the deconstructive element of
Klee’s painting: his decomposition of the forms in lines, his representation of
nature in symbols, his representation of the world as something at the same
time temporary and synchronic. On the other hand, in his articles on Klee of
previous years Hausenstein had referred - about Klee – to the terms
‘corruption’, ‘decadence’ and ‘disintegration’, all terms related to the
decomposition of reality. Surprisingly, these are concepts that he had designed
in positive terms (although they had irritated Klee).
Returning to the
novel-essay, Hausenstein writes that the painting of Klee can never be
objectified and belongs directly to the spirit [243]. “For his painting there is no association that allows an interpretation,
as it can be understood only by way of osmosis: nothing of that painting can be
denied, and it enters in all of us through the pores of our skin and the
mirrors of our senses. It is an art of an unprecedented difficulty: the art of
removing the outline and colourful gray from the spirit; the art of finding a
balance between silhouette and its reflection. It is the compulsion of life
that forces the painter, while devout in his heart and in his soul, to the life
of a heretic.” [244]
Therefore a
paradox becomes evident: the art critic for whom Klee spent most energy to
prepare an accurate biographical support is also the one adopting a narrative
genre least in tune with the gaunt and minimalist style of writing of the
artist. Not only: at the very moment in which Klee tries to ensure commercial
success, Hausenstein potentially undermines this perspective with a really
extravagant text, written in function of the political and cultural identity
crisis that he is living after the war. It is perhaps for this reason that Klee
acts to be sure that the publication of Hausenstein will appear only as the
third and last one in the series of monographs of 1920-1921.
As for Wilhelm
Hausenstein, the literary critic Michael Haerdter writes that the novel was a
very painful moment for the author. A profoundly optimistic man, a writer of
essays and monographs on modern art, a great friend of France and French
culture, an internationalist and anti-nationalist left Social Democratic (Marxist, but not communist), he believes that Expressionism - as triumph of a collective
style on naturalist individualism, like it had been tried in vain by Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden in
1906 - will lead, thanks to a new form of collectivist art, to an improvement
of human beings. All disappoints. His attempt to create, with the New Secession of 1914, a united movement
of all expressionists of Monaco fails due to the rejection of Kandinsky and
Marc to join, and he must therefore recognize that avant-garde painters are -
first of all - incurable individualists. He is then deeply shocked by the war,
on which he always writes very negatively. The support of the Social Democrats
to the approval of war credits upsets him and makes him leave the SPD. The enthusiasm
of Marc and his wife for the conflict (and the fanatical determination of the
widow, after her death, to celebrate the husband as a fallen hero for the
success of a national art) destroys his belief that he can reconcile modern art
with civil progress. After the war, in the winter of 1918, Hausenstein adheres
to the revolutionary movements in Berlin (along with Pechstein). When in the
spring of 1919 his Munich becomes the terrain of a brief but bloody civil war
(it saw thousands of casualties in a few days, after the attempt of the
Spartacus movement to take power and create a Soviet state in Bavaria, and the
so-called 'white terror' against them), his whole emotional world collapses.
These events
also match a profound change of aesthetic convictions, right in the moment he is
finishing the book on Klee [245]. What may look like a dream, the continuous
metaphysical dissolution of the world in Munich around the church of St. Ursula
- in the first part of the novel-essay - should not only be read as a parable
interpretation of the perceived deconstructivist art of Klee, but also as an
illustration of the collapse of the society. This also explains why in the
conclusions of Hausenstein’s text, the art of Paul Klee is seen as a symbol of
''a European art between 1914 and 1919, the art of an European in the times of
the most terrible of all wars" [246]. A few months later, in 1922, he
writes - as epilogue added to the third edition of his History of visual arts – a "Cry of grief and mourning" (Aufschrei des Schrekens und der Trauer).
After many years
Wilhelm Hausenstein will be appointed - very old now – as the first consul and
then the first ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Paris by Konrad
Adenauer, as a sign of the importance given by the first chancellor of postwar
Germany to culture in the construction of Europe.
NOTES
[196] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee, Mit einer Biographie des
Künstlers, einem farbigen Titelbild und 52 Abbildungen [Paul Klee, With a
Biography of the artist, a colour cover page and 52 images], Series Junge Kunst
[Young Art], Leipzig, von Klinkhardr and Biermann Publishers, 68 pages.
[197] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee
(quoted, p. 5)
[198] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee
(quoted, p. 6)
[199] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee
(quoted, p. 8)
[200] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee (quoted),
p. 8
[201] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee (quoted),
p. 9
[202] Klee,
Paul - Creative Confession and other writings - Tate Publishing, London, 2013,
32 pages
[203] Klee,
Paul – Briefe an die Familie (Letters
to the family), DuMont, 1979.
[204] Klee,
Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918.
Textkritische Neuedition (Diaries 1898-1918. New critical edition). Edited
by the Paul Klee Foundation and the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Verlag Gerd Hatje and
Verlag Arthur Niggli, 1988, 591 pages. Quotation at page 529.
[205] Zahn, Leopold – Paul Klee. Leben / Werk / Geist [Paul Klee. Life / Work / Soul],
Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Potsdam, 1920, 87 pages. See
also:
[206] All
quotes for the Diaries are drawn from the English version of 1968, mentioning
the number of the paragraph. The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918. Edited, with
an Introduction, by Felix Klee, University of California Press, Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1964. The quote is at paragraph 907.
[207] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 914
[208] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), see paragraphs 976, 1018 and 1126.
[209] The
first part of the English quoted text (until But not nearly close enough) is from Franciscono, Manuel - Paul
Klee: His Work and Thought, University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 406.
Quotation at page 5. The second part of the translation is mine.
[210] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 1008
[211] Sallis,
John – The Philosophical Vision of Paul Klee, Lejden, Brill, 2014, pp. 209
[212] Cappelletti, Paolo – L’inafferrabile visione. Pittura e scrittura in
Paul Klee (The incomprehensible vision. Painting and
writing in Paul Klee) Milano, Jaca Book, 2003, p. 112
[213] Geelhaar,
Christian – Journal intime oder Autobiographie?
Über Paul Klees Tagebücher (Intimate Journal or Autobiography? On the
Diaries of Paul Klee), in Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk (Early works) 1883-1922, 12 December–2 March
1980, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, pp. 246-260
[214] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career. 1914-1920, Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, pp. 333
[215] Zahn,
Leopold – Paul Klee. (quoted), p. 17
[216] Zahn,
Leopold – Paul Klee. (quoted), p. 24
[217] See
the most interesting lesson by Charles Haxthausen on „Paul Klee, Wilhelm
Hausenstein and the style problem” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC9OuHH9_gY
(observed in May 2015)
[218] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 925
[219] Klee, Paul – Briefe an die Familie (quoted), p. 777
[220] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 926i
[221] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p. 116
[222] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p. 47
[223] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 1092
[224] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.119
[225] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 1109
[226] Klee, Paul – Briefe an die Familie (quoted), p. 911
[227] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.119
[228] Klee, Paul – Briefe an die Familie (quoted), p. 901
[229] Klee, Paul – Briefe an die Familie (quoted), p. 926
[230] The
Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 1126a
[231] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.119
[232] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p. 217
[233] The Diaries
of Paul Klee 1898-1918, (quoted), paragraph 966.
[234] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.129
[235] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), pp. 3-4
[236] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.227
[237] Klee,
Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918.
Textkritische Neuedition (quoted), p. 528.
[238] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918. Textkritische Neuedition (quoted), p. 528
[239] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918. Textkritische Neuedition (quoted), p. 530
[240] Werckmeister,
Otto Karl – The Making of Paul Klee’s Career (quoted), p.135
[241] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918. Textkritische Neuedition (quoted), p. 530
[242] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee
und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters, [Kairuan or a history of painter Klee
and of the art of his time], Munich, Klinkhardt and Bierman, 2014, 171 pp.
Quotation at pages 16-17.
[243] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee
und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters (quoted), p. 24
[244] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee
und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters (quoted), p. 25
[245] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee
und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters (quoted), p. 159
[246] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee
und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters (quoted), p. 117
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