Rhythmic Tidings of the Industrial and the Organic
I seek a distant point at the origins of creations and there I sense a kind of formula for man, animal, plant, earth, fire, water, air, and all circling forces at once.
Paul Klee Journal Entry
Swiss-German Paul Klee is primarily associated with Abstract Expressionism. He was a professor at the Bauhaus art school in Weimer Germany for a decade (1921–1931). Fellow artists in his field include Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky, the former who was a close friend and the latter from whom he took instruction and then became close friends with.
Paul Klee remained independent from his contemporaries, yet, he was a relevant contributor. In his journal and notebook ‘The Thinking Eye,’ he detailed his influences, friends, and alumni. He described their contribution to his artistic process, and how he saw himself removed from their style.
Initially, Klee was an etcher and draftsman. However, the evolution of his expressionist style included prominent influences from Cubists and Futurists. He was particularly taken with Orphic Cubism a style advocated by Robert Delaunay and Sophie Delaunay.
The impact of Orphic Cubism is apparent in Klee’s assimilation of abstracted geometric style in his works during 1912–1913. All the while, Klee’s biting, satirical societal observations are an integral aspect of his pieces.
Klee, Kandinsky, Marc and Der Blaue Reiter
In 1911, Klee become familiar with a group of avantgarde painters, artists, and thinkers. He was initiated into Der Blaue Reiter. This almanac of the Modern Movement was founded by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky.
This group consisted of an affiliation of artists who showcased exhibitions from 1911–1914. This wasn’t an established scholarly organization with a set of principles, or philosophy, of artisit direction. However, Kandinsky was formulating his thesis on abstraction and the spiritual in art. This had an impact on modern artist like Klee, especially seeing that both Kandinsky and Klee were professors of the Bauhaus School of Art.
The first decade into the twentieth century Kandinsky was developing his prominent theory on art abstraction as a reckoning of the spiritual. Together with Marc, Kandinsky’s investigation into the deeper mysticism of abstract art revealed to Klee, the far-reaching potential of the constructs of Modernism.
Der Blaue Reiter included among its members, cubists, futurists, primitivism, and modernists. The works of Henri Rousseau was showcased among other highly influential artists of the time.
Kandinsky’s ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’
This all−important spark of inner life today is at present only a spark. Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Russian abstract artist Kandinsky stressed the ‘inner necessity’ that art endeavoured to satisfy. According to Kandinsky, color acts to ignite the senses, and entices the soul to an awakened state. While the triangle removes the audience from the boundaries of the material values of society.
This “purely physical impression” (Kandinsky, 1977, p. 17) of color is a singularly surface level experience, which unknowingly is a catalyst for a sequence of sensations to a transpersonal state. Abstract art fosters quality of experience via enhanced spiritual connection with the piece.
The chapter, ‘The Movement of the Triangle’, Kandinsky positions that the force of spirit becomes realised in the slow, insistent ascension of this three-angled geometric shape. This ascension is a movement beyond materialism to the soul undefined by the material world.
He attributed lines and colours to various sensations evoked in the spectator. Essentially, ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art,’ promoted abstract art as a solution to the crisis of the Modern age. Klee, could never fully reconcile Kandinsky’s severe abstract prescriptions. In his journals, he acknowledges his preferred affiliation with primitive and folk art.
Klee, Mapping Out the Cadence of Abstraction
We learn the very special kind of progress that leads towards a critical striving backward, towards the earlier on which the later grows.
Paul Klee, Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art (1928)
Klee prioritized forming over form. He valued the process and endeavored to represent the ongoing production of ideas and not so much the finished result. He began his pieces with no set objective or planned goal, allowing the inspirations of point, plane, color, or line to lead where they may.
He focused on the creative realm and portrayed the fabric of improvision. Assigning intuition a backup role, he allotted, in his pieces, reason and imagination leading parts. The interaction of reason and imagination is an essential element in the design process.
Bauhaus, the Mechanics of Design and Klee
The Bauhaus years enjoyed by Klee, are considered the height of his artistic maturity. Prior to his appointment as a lecturer of the mechanics of design, Klee had finished his service as a German citizen in the first World War.
Klee, who had graduated from the Literarschule in 1898, and had studied in the private art school of Heinrich Knirr was on a fresh path and perspective. Also, he spent about six years in Rome and Paris, learning from the established masters. Now he embraced newly founded Weimer as an opportunity for hope and an inclusive productive, culturally innovative society.
Bauhaus demanded from Klee, a constant acquiring and application of the laws of pictorial structure. In Bauhaus, Klee lectured and oversaw glass-painting and book-binding workshops.
In these workshops, he showed his students how to:
Dig Deep and Lay Bare
Paul Klee Notes (1921–2)
As a collective learning body, these workshops embraced the laws of art. They meditated on the quality of a single point. How a point became a line, a line a plane, and planes created space.
These laws facilitated experimentation with different mediums, styles, and design methods. Emphasising the process and not the end result, resuscitated what Hamilton refers to as a “latent reality hidden” (Hamilton, 1976, p. 497) and in Klee’s words “the prehistory of the visible.” (Klee, 1908, p. 242)
The enigmatic ‘phrasing’ of line, plane, and space elicited a “physic effect” (Hamilton, 1976, p. 497) of the unperceived subjective occasion. The trajectory of abstraction in art had corresponding insights into the human experience. Klee’s body of work was a lifetime of searching for:
A synthesis of outward sight and inward vision. (Hamilton, 1976, p. 499)
Conclusion
Abstract expressionism is a challenging subject to take on. Klee’s notes in his journal and ‘The Thinking Eye’ introduce the reader to new, unexplored thoughts of art representation, with point, line, plane and the manifestation of space on a two-dimensional surface. Along with Kandinsky these insights provoke necessary questions about the role of art in culture and society.
References
Bauhaus Weimar International — Articles — bauhaus imaginista (bauhaus-imaginista.org)
[PDF] Concerning the Spiritual in Art | Semantic Scholar
Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art, by Paul Klee (arthistoryproject.com)
George Heard Hamilton,Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880–1940. (1969). Art Journal, 29(1), 128–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.1969.10794683
Kandinsky and Abstraction: The Role of the Hidden Image (artforum.com)
Kandinsky, Marc & Der Blaue Reiter | Artinside
Paul Klee: making visible a deeper reality :: November 2013 :: Cassone (cassone-art.com)
Paul_Klee_Notebooks_Vol_1_The_Thinking_Eye.pdf (monoskop.org)
