The Unique Art of Paul Klee
Artistic experimentation that can inspire us all
Just look at this painting. There are mists of layered watercolour, scales of dotted paint, and the scratched outline of a snake. A menagerie of animals, plants and machinery unfolding like a wind-up toy. The creation of life from a line that, in overlapping itself, snares a form.
Paul Klee’s famous dictum, that drawing is a matter of taking a line for a walk, indicates the spontaneity in his method. His mastery lay in his willingness to let an inner logic accrue in the image through a steady and patient build-up. Lines may walk, but in their aimlessness are nonetheless permitted to contrive into forms, whether they be organic structures, geometric blocks or three-dimensional landscapes.
To work unplanned is to be necessarily open to failures, and I think Klee must have been at ease with reappraising his intentions, so that a failure could always be allowed to survive and transmute into something better. This is the only way that innovation can really happen; the artist who holds onto purpose too avidly, fails to move forward. Klee’s great innovation was his ability to turn a doodle, a whim, an…
