Book Review | Pedagogical Sketchbook, by Paul Klee

A brief consideration of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook.

When I recently purchased a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, the book’s seller told me he didn’t understand the book, saying it was “p esoteric.” Since the seller also told me that he’d sell me a copy of Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion the following week, I told him I’d read Klee’s book and report back. I didn’t do either of the latter, but I did purchase two copies of The Abortion the following week.

I haven’t finished The Abortion yet, but this brief consideration isn’t about that book, it’s about this book.

Helpful Background Information

Paul Klee was a Swiss artist. An independantly-minded but prolific producer of work, Klee’s art touched nearly all notable movements of his time (Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, etc).

Contrary to his parents’ hope for him to become a musician, Klee began studies in 1898 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. At the Academy, Klee quickly became an adept draftsman, but lacked a natural sense of color.

“During the third winter (of studies) I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint.” — Paul Klee

During his tenure in school Klee spent considerable time in pubs, and had affairs with lower class women and artists’ models. In 1900 he had an illigitimate son who died several weeks after birth.

Much later in his career — after finishing studies, living an adventurous and galavanting life before and after World War I, fighting in World War I, and becoming one of the most significant art writers and theorists since Leonardo Da Vinci — Klee published his Pedagogical Sketchbook in 1925 under its oringial title, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch.

The book began as a pile of notes Klee used during lectures while teaching at the Bauhaus, and with editing help from Walter Gropius, and design support from László Moholy-Nagy, Klee’s stack of papers became the very same book you can (potentially) find in well-curated art gallery bookstores.

“After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks.” — Paul Klee, reflecting on barely passing his final exams as an art student

Overview of the Book

It’s short, but dense; deceptively difficult to digest, but written with of wit and pithy wisdom. The purpose of the guidebook was to teach Bauhaus students about the dynamic principles of visual art, and to guide them along an illustrated adventure in seeing. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy reflected that Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook was the closest he’d ever come to writing an academic textbook.¹

The Pedagogical Sketchbook is divided into four divisions, each containing pages flourished with whimsical illustrations and descriptions that sometimes match:

• Proportionate line and structure: defining “line” as 1) a point that goes for a walk; 2) planar definition; 3) mathematical proportions; 4) coordinator for paths of motion.
• Dimension and balance: a look at “line” as an 1) optical guide; 2) optical reason; 3) psychological balance.
• Gravitational curve: the energy projection of a line.
• Kinetic and chromatic energy: “line” as a symbol of 1) centrifugal and centripedal movement; 2) will and infinity; 3) color mutations and kinetic harmony.

“First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.” — Paul Klee, reflecting on his life’s work

Final Thoughts

The Pedagogical Sketchbook is wonderful, precisely because it contains things like this (written to help frame an analysis of a line’s directional energy):

The contrast between man’s ideological capacity to move at random through material and metaphysical spaces and his physical limitations, is the origin of all human tragedy. It is this contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged — half imprisoned, this is man!

If you like art history, are a non-ironic Bauhaus fanboy/girl, or make art yourself, buy a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook and keep it someplace you’ll regularly catch a glimps of it. Because each time you’ll think to yourdelf, “ahh, what a strange but perfect little book.”

[1] If you find a copy of the Pedagogical Sketchbook you’ll see that it’s decidedly not an acedemic textbook.