original title:
Paul Klee: Researcher of Color, Illustrator of Thoughts
Luo Jiayang
In the “Modernism Walk” exhibition held jointly by the Ullens Art Center in Shanghai and Beijing, more than 30 representative works of Paul Klee are the most comprehensive display of this artist in China so far. Along with Picasso and Matisse, he is a master of modernist art. However, for Chinese audiences, this may be a slightly unfamiliar name. Why did Paul Klee leave his name in art history? How should his works be read?
–editor
During the “Modernism Stroll” I saw a group of classic Paul Klee works from the collection of the Staatliche Berggruen Museum in Berlin. In addition to lamenting the exhibition’s pioneering significance for Chinese audiences, what impressed me even more was the art collections in Europe. Traditionally, a collector has a keen sense and foresight of contemporary art happenings, as well as his own insight into art. This batch of Klee’s works outlines the artist’s active tendencies throughout his short creative career. Their power is so great that a simple time narrative is enough to demonstrate them.
Chinese audiences probably rarely have the opportunity to see Klee’s works directly. It is obvious that Klee’s popularity in the Western world is much higher than that in China. Therefore, just from the perspective of viewing, it becomes a question how to read Klee’s works, although the public has been told more than once that Klee is the master of color. But we still seem to have to ask: When it comes to color, why not Monet or Van Gogh?
It is impossible to judge Paul Klee’s artistic style from traditional art history. Klee did not follow any set of classical techniques, and he never regarded oil paint on canvas as a medium he was good at. Instead, he used cardboard watercolor to continuously express his endless self-dialectical thinking. This is actually a common feature of art in the modernist period. In the early days of Klee’s artistic career, he was immersed in the wave of the European art avant-garde movement in the early 20th century. In Klee’s pre-Bauhaus works, there are vague influences from Robert Delaunay and Henri Rousseau. But Klee doesn’t really imitate anyone’s colors. He is not so much a master of color as he is a great color researcher and a philosopher of art. Because for him, “What does ‘nature’ mean here? What matters is the laws according to which ‘nature’ operates and how it is revealed to the artist.” (Quoted from “Klee’s Diary”, translated by Yuyun)
Feininger, a colleague from the Bauhaus period, described Klee’s unusual daily life: “Klee would take long walks alone every day, and then pick up all kinds of strange things on the way: butterfly wings, shells, strange shapes, etc. Roots, stones of various colors…brought back to his studio in Weimar.” (Quoted from “Klee’s Diary”) Klee’s paintings are full of experimentation, sometimes using seals to stamp colors, sometimes using scissors Use scissors, needles, and knives to “destroy” the painting. Use scissors to cut off a part that is considered to be removed, and the cut-off part may be collaged into another painting when necessary. Although the collage technique is a popular creative method in the modern art period, Klee’s approach is different from the collages of Berlin Dada of the same period, or the more well-known Matisse paper-cuttings of the same period. It is still an expressive behavior of painting when dealing with a single work or a specific theme, and the latter completely regards the creation of the picture as a never-ending artistic exploration process that transcends the scale of a single picture. “In my creative activities, every time a style always grows beyond the stage of its creation. When I am about to reach the goal, its intensity disappears very quickly, and I have to find new ways again. This is the reason for being prolific; Survival is more important than existence.” (Quoted from “Klee’s Diary”) This is more like a rational generation and construction process, and Klee is always striving and keen to advance this process infinitely, just like the layers of philosophical speculation. The rational process of analysis. Some of Klee’s works, especially those “lattice paintings” from the Weimar period, have obvious deductive logic and were produced simultaneously with the basic teaching practices of the Bauhaus. The experimental creations visually confirmed his theoretical construction, and the theoretical basis Philosophy is also further explained through creation. Therefore, whether it is a work or a text, readers can more or less perceive the trajectory of Klee’s thinking. Klee once said: “Can a visual work be created entirely at once? No, it is built piece by piece, just like a house.”
As a former member of the “Blue Rider”, Paul Klee was undoubtedly described by critics at the time as a German avant-garde artist, but his calm, rigorous paintings, and even child-like lines made it difficult to detect any rebellious power. However, Klee’s pioneering consciousness seems to be innate, and a dialectical negative force is deeply internalized in Klee’s extremely independent personality. Klee’s works are highly personalized. They are not as expressive in painting as Kandinsky during the Blue Rider period, nor are they as sharply aggressive as Futurism or Dada, nor are they as aggressive as De Stijl. Sacred and solemn. On the path of exploring new art, Klee had his own monologue, “The first sign of light on this black background is not as fierce and compelling as the black power on white. It allows you to move forward in a more leisurely way. The original black Become a counter force, starting where reality stops. The effect is like the light of the rising sun shining slightly on both sides of the valley. As the sun rises, the light gradually penetrates deeper, and the remaining dark corners are just left. “Object.” (Quoted from “Klee’s Diary”) This passage reveals the reason for the dark background of Klee’s works. He usually applies a layer of clear-toned background and lowers the surrounding brightness very low. To contrast and highlight the highlighted subject in the center of the picture. On the one hand, this is due to his experience in printmaking and his love for printmaking. However, looking at his thoughts, this contrary approach can be reconciled in Klee, and the rebellious approach is integrated into every subtlety of his actions.
Klee’s paintings, his words, and his thoughts are highly unified, and they are also highly unified when it comes to his words and deeds. This is of great benefit to us in viewing Klee’s works. We can start to understand his works from the rich documentary heritage left by Klee. The most famous ones are the “Teaching Notes” collected by Gropius in the second volume of the Bauhaus series, and the two volumes of Ben Klee’s notes compiled and published in the 1960s and 1970s: the first volume “The Thinking Eye” (1961) and the second volume, “The Nature of Nature” (1970). The diary written by Klee himself and supplemented by his son Felix also provides us with a lot of help in understanding his life.
Italian art historian Giulio Carlo Argan wrote in the preface to the two-volume notebook: “Paul Klee’s writing constitutes his theory of form generation and pictorial form, and his writing is as significant to modern art as Leo The significance of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings to Renaissance art, which constituted Leonardo da Vinci’s theory of painting.” It is difficult to say whether Klee himself regarded Leonardo da Vinci as the God of art. In Klee’s letters He seemed to be more touched by Raphael’s evaluation. However, while he was full of respect and admiration for the sage, he obviously did not blindly desire to pursue the glory of the Renaissance 400 years ago. Klee’s observations in art museums were often general. He would speak concisely and concisely from Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian to Delacroix, and from Manet to Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, it was very similar. Our contemporary real and unsophisticated viewing state today. Here, an implicit relativistic thinking is revealed. Klee has a habit of erasing the temporal divide between the past and the future, moving towards universal exploration beyond diachrony. Therefore, all classics are re-refined and redefined in the interaction of inversion and circulation. He is observing and searching for the meta-level formal logic. Therefore, the path of pilgrimage to the glory of the past is obviously not more exciting to Klee than the path that is infinitely close to the next Renaissance.
Motion, a concept that was the core issue of modernist art at the beginning of the 20th century, was also valued by Klee. Klee’s thinking pushed this concept to a fuller and deeper meaning, believing that it refers to the rotation of mechanical devices, just like the machine movement commonly depicted by futurism at that time, with a speed and power that transcends human scales. But it’s more than that. In the works of Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism, we can clearly see that the speed brought by movement destroys and subverts the image of objects, but Klee obviously did not follow any established doctrine to create “realistic” images of moving objects. “Recording, but exploring a more macroscopic, metaphysical, and universal nature of movement.
In Klee’s notes, what we can see are either clear arrows in one direction, a chaotic and infinite group of lines, or orderly rotating spirals. There are no specific objects. The essence of various movements inspires us. More of a pure reflection on the form of painting after getting rid of the content. In the constant surge, rotation, and impact, the art of the past, the art of the present, and the art of the future are unified in a completely relativistic movement. Just as in the Bauhaus class in the winter of 1921, Klee redefined a point like this: “We say from a point to a line, but a point does not have the dimension of a surface. It is an infinitesimal element of the area, a zero. The cause of movement, it is in a state of rest. Movement is the prerequisite for change. And here there are immovable things. As a primitive element, the point is extremely important. Everything on the earth is limited to movement, And such movements are inherently regulated within all things, and they need a stimulating power source. The initial movement, that is, the cause, is a point, which is placed in the process of movement (the origin of form). Therefore, a The line is created. It is a real, active line, full of tension, and because it is the most active, it is also the most real.” If I could be allowed at this moment to compare Kandinsky’s points, or Malevich’s points (circle) are far-fetchedly connected, it is not difficult to find that Klee’s understanding goes further in the same effort of artist-like thinking towards the rational construction of philosophy.
Gropius’s slogan of “Unity of Art and Technology” in 1923 triggered a fierce debate among Bauhaus masters, while Klee calmly stood in a neutral position and smiled to welcome the game of various forces. He may only be loyal to the freedom of each individual, just as he is always wary of turning teaching into a dogmatic program because of a certain tendency. Klee really hoped that his courses would provide each student with a real foundation for independent creation in the future, and his close friend Kandinsky was very different from him on this point. In fact, Klee always embraced the conflict of all forces, including the self-dialectical collision of ideas. In this chaos, Klee was able to gain fresh and free motivation, foreseeing a new world or a new self. Many of his works are expressed in a conflicting isomorphism, and in the long run, some of his works can also be revised and modified over a long period of time, constantly developing and changing due to constant self-dialectics. All of Klee’s works can also be seen as a coherent and self-consistent unity full of change and heterogeneity. We can always perceive his strong but indescribable unique style, and also refine some of his creative rules.
But what touches me even more is that in each of Klee’s works, we can clearly feel the different Klee at each stage, and the interesting twists and turns in his thinking every time he deals with specific problems. Obviously, Klee always knew how to liberate himself from all thoughts, including his own. He is always sincerely thinking about the most essential questions, just like when he met Oskar Schlemmer at the train station in Weimar in 1921, he sincerely asked: What is the price of meat here?
(The author is a doctoral candidate at the School of Arts and Humanities, China Academy of Art)
