Paul Klee: A Misleading Childlike Narrative Rooted in Art Movements and History
Paul Klee (1879-1940) is an artist with a slick point of view. His childish depictions and geometrical patterns are the renderings of years of practice, reflection and self- introspection. The retrospective of the German Swiss painter at Pompidou, which ended last month, gathered overs 300 artworks coming from the Zentraum Paul Klee museum in Bern. “Irony at Work” sought to explore Klee’s unsettling beginnings which led to a remarkable production influenced by cubism, constructivism and the Bauhaus, always enhanced by his believes.
Romantic irony was defined at the end of the 18th century by the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel by the methodology used by artists in their attempt to overcome their limited state of actions within a strictly delimited world. Klee used satire in his paintings in order to claim his values and express his opinions on the world’s state and condition. Therefore, his drawings and paintings at that time revealed nude grotesque figures and distorted human bodies. (“Female nude, buttocks jutting out animal-like, monumentally assured, 1905)
Klee’s pictorial research encountered cubism which he came across at the end of 1911 in Munich and then a year later in Paris. However, the artist didn’t apply cubism literarily, he purposely twisted and broke down cubist figures. He kept following this path after he traveled to North Africa in Tunisia. This trip left an imprint on his work’s construction. In “Grunes x links oben”, Klee played with geometry, vertical apparent lines used to structure the painting left visible to contrast with the abstract nature of the subject.
From one painting to the other, and from what we know of Klee’s mainstreamed paintings characterized by childish innocent portraits, we could discern a logic, a learning phase and an evolution that led Klee to what we know of him. He was perfectly aware of the notion of irony and the infantilizing characters of his paintings.
The painter found balance between his instinctive approach and the constructivist dogmas emerging from the Bauhaus. Helped by the grids and the rational forms of squares reminiscent of mosaics he introduced a base that he blended with other irregularities.
The exhibition also underlined the ferocious relationship between Klee and Picasso and his unsuspected influence on his renderings. The two faced portrait “Elternspiegel”, 1933 seems to borrow its biomorphic physiognomy from Picasso’s art pieces
The last part of the exhibition revealed the artist’s renown pieces: childlike portraits applied to a second plan geometrical surface. Klee’s purpose was hence apparent. His paintings were the creations of his imagination and the interpretation of his own observations of the world, its incidents on human behavior.
Paul Klee “Irony at work” a retrospective presented at Centre Pompidou in Paris.
