I and Thou, : The Dialogue between the visible and the visible
On 17 December 1928 Klee left Dessau for a four-week journey to Egypt, Where he saw Alexandria, Cairo, Luxox, Karnak, Thebes and Aswan. On his return to Dessau he produced numberous works based on impressions gained on his travels. Güse, ed. Paul Klee: Dialogue with Nature, 118 Young Trees on Cleared Terrain, 1929
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. "Creative Credo," These associative properties of the structure, once exposed and labeled, no longer correspond to wholly to the direct will of the artist and just these associative properties have been the source of passionate misunderstandings between artist and layman. The argument is therefore concerned less with the question of the existence of an object, than with its appearance at an given moment with its nature. On Modern Art Highway and Byway, 1929
The objects in pictures look out at us serene or severe, tense or relaxed, comforting or forbidding, suffering or smiling. They show us all the contrasts in the psychic-physiognomical field, contrast which may range from tragedy to comedy. I have tried explained their appearance as groups, and their combination, limited at first, but later somewhat more extensive, into images Highway and Byway, 1929
For the artist, dialogue with nature remains a conditio sine qua non. The artist is a man, himself nature and part of nature in natural space. Yesterday s artistic creed and the related study of nature consisted in a painfully precise investigation of appearance. I and thou, the artist and his object, sought to establish opticalphysical relations across the invisible barrier between the `I and the `you....while the art of contemplating unoptical impressions and of making them visible was neglected. Tree/Man Dialogue, 1939 The artist of today is more than an improved camera;... He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is to say, a creature on a star among stars.
Diagram for Ways of Nature Study All ways meet in the eye and there, turned into form, lead to a synthesis of outward sight and inward vision. Auge = eye Centrum = center Du (Gegenstand) =thou (the object) Dynamik= dynamics Erde =earth Erscheinung= appearance Ich (Künstler) = I (the artist) metaphysischer Weg =metaphysical way nicht optischer Weg = non-optical way gemeinsamer irdischer Verwurzelung = of shared terrestrial roots kosmischer Gemeinsamkeit = of cosmic community optisch-physicher Weg =optical-physical way sichtbare Verinneriichung =visible intensity Slatik = static Welt = cosmos
rganic Dialogue among Nature, artist, and art, audience Nature Artist Art Root Trunk Crown The artist has studied this world of variety and has, we may suppose, unobtrusively found his way in it. His sense of direction has brought order into the passing stream of image and experience. This sense of direction in nature and life, this branching and spreading array, I shall compare with the root of the tree. From the root the sap flows to the artists, flows through him, flows to his eye. Thus he stands as the trunk of the tree. Battered and stirred by the strength of the flow, he molds his vision into his work. As, in full view of the world, the crown of the tree unfolds
Organic Dialogue among Nature, artist, and art, audience Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its roots. Between above and below can be no mirrored reflection. It is obvious that different functions expanding in different elements must produce vital divergences. And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.
Conception of whole and simultaneous dimensions It is not easy to arrive at a conception of a whole which is constructed from parts belonging to different dimensions. And not only nature, but also art, her transformed image, is such a whole. For, with such a medium of expression [spoken word], we lack the means of discussing, in its constituent parts, an image which possesses simultaneously a number of dimensions. What the so-called spatial arts have long succeeded in expressing, what even the time-bound art of music has gloriously achieved in the harmony of polyphony...
Untitle, 1897 Klee s schoolboy work
Delaunay: nature is imbued with rhythm that in its multiplicity cannot be constrained. Art should imitate her in this, in order to clarify itself to equal sublimity, to raise itself to vision of multiple harmony, a harmony of colors that divide and in one and the same process reunite to form a whole. On Light Fir Wood 1914
Robert Delaunay, Windows Open Simultaneously 1st Part, 3rd Motif, 1912 Delaunay: nature is imbued with rhythm that in its multiplicity cannot be constrained. Art should imitate her in this, in order to clarify itself to equal sublimity, to raise itself to vision of multiple harmony, a harmony of colors that divide and in one and the same process reunite to form a whole. On Light
The more terrible the world is (as it is particularly today), the more abstract is art, while a happy world produce nontranscendent art. Diary entry, 1914 Sad Flowers, 1917
Dynamic vortex structure: Cold (blue, green, velvet): concentric, clockwise movement Warm (orange, red): decentric, counter-clockwise movement Combination of various views: eg. Upward and downward The Idea of Firs, 1917
Multiple perspective: movement of time (Moon, Sun) as metaphor for the growth of plants and trees. Texture of the painting Flower Myth, 1918
When such a structure gradually expands before our eyes it is easy for an association to present itself, which plays the role of he temper to an objective interpretation. For every highly organized structure lends itself, with a little imagination, to comparison with familiar structure of nature. Klee, On Modern Art The association of a leaf of a tree with a feather of a bird Feather Plant, 1919
Rose Wind, 1922 Body in BODY, Self in SELF The movement of Dot Line Arrow The diverse movements of line strokes 天圓地方 : Earth bound (down): white red brown green blue. Cosmo bound (up): blue green brown red white.
Little Fir-Tree Picture, 1922 The juxtaposition of three degrees of abstraction of a fir tree articulates the unstable conception of space: 1. Fir as relation of lines 2. Fir as relation of lines planes 3. Fir as an idea of the image
Framing: dividable vs. individual finite vs. infinite And we: spectators, always, everywhere, turned toward the world of objects, never outward It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down. We rearrange it, then break down ourselves. Rilke, The Eighth Elegy Frame and gradation: 1. Open vs. close space/form 2. Finite vs. infinitedividable vs. individua 3. Material (corporeality) vs. non-material Framed Landscape with Fir Trees, 1924
Garden in St. Germain, European Colony in Turnisia, 1914
Southern Garden, 1914
Classical Garden, 1926
The movement of the spiral vs. the movement of the forks (branches): An artist s shared terrestrial roots and cosmic community And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules he transmits. Forking And Snail, 1937