Paul Klee

Every artist is a cult of personality, it is impossible to look at art without wondering what kind of person created it.

 If the art speaks to you it's only natural to think the artist is a kindred spirit or at least a person worth knowing. If time and space were no barriers, who would like to associate with?  Would you drink all night with Picasso? Let Phillip K Dick write your biography? Have Salvador Dali paint your house? Contract Brian Eno and Cesar Franck to compose a symphony? Talk about life, love and world philosophy with Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and George Orwell?

 The artists we choose are like the friends we spend our time with. There are paternal forces in society that wish guide us down the straight and narrow path of working hard and never being troubled with the difficult questions of life. Never trust anyone who says they will think for you.  

 


If your enjoying these images, they are all the work of Paul Klee. His work includes many influences and falls in between the cracks of expressionism, cubism, futurism and surrealism. I don't think he is as well known as many of his contemporaries because he was more of an individualist than a stylist. He lived and taught in Germany until 1933 and the emigrated to Switzerland after Nazi harassment. In 1937 , 17 works by Klee were included in the exhibition of "Degenerate Art". This was part of the Nazi reaction against modernism and like all authoritative states it was a way to discredit and destroy something they can control.




The deeply personal, the mystical, the parts of life that could only be felt and never well explained are dangerously subversive to any philosophy that demands  a complete devotion to order and duty. If life isn't a journey of exploration then what is it? If your own life is reduced to just an existence, the experience of a hamster in a cage, then have you failed in your duty to yourself? Who's purpose does your life serve?

"Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible" -  Paul Klee