What Does Art Does Not Reproduce the Visible Rather It Makes Visible Mean
'Fine art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible'
Paul Klee, Artistic Credo
This painting was the concluding paradigm made by the painter Paul Klee before he died in 1940. He belongs to that group of artists who lived to endure both the commencement and 2d world war with their idealism securely tested only ultimately intact. For Klee the test was even more than astringent as he faced the reality non only of seeing the rise of fascism in Germany but likewise of facing a serious illness.
He was born in Switzerland to a German language father and a Swiss mother. He was an achieved musician, poet and creative person. He chose the visual arts as his vocation and began his journey by showtime overcoming the heavy weight of the renaissance. He started his training in Munich, which he chose over Paris, with its stress on depicting outer surfaces; Frg, in contrast, had its stress on emotion and depth. In Munich, Klee could pursue his quest to make the inner nature of things visible. Having been mainly a graphic artist, he broke through to the realm of color on a journey to Tunis. He said of this fourth dimension that he and colour had go one and that he could finally telephone call himself a painter.
This painting is then moving when i considers its context. Klee had had to go out Frg when Hitler came to power. I try to imagine his pain on seeing all he and his fellow artists had built up in the Bauhaus. The school had been a heartfelt response to the trauma of the starting time globe war. Information technology was a mod effort to initiate a identify of learning and creativity with the same artistic and social power as the communities that grew up around the building of the great European Cathedrals. All that hopeful piece of work was defamed and misunderstood and its creators were branded as decadent and degenerate by the Nazis. When Klee was accused of being a Jew, he replied that, first of all, this was not truthful and second, it would not matter if he were. Returning to Switzerland he also had to face struggling for citizenship and almost shattering of all in 1935 he received a diagnosis of scleroderma which was to cause his death in 1940.
Battling with low and the horror of all the same another state of war he was unable to paint to begin with. By 1937 he was finally able to suspension through his creative paralysis. He had hitherto been known as an creative person who combined magic and depth with exquisite humour. Facing the darkness of his biography, his subject, in those concluding few years of his life, now struck what he called a tragic vein. The paintings testify him struggling with both angels and demons and the being of death. If we know about this struggle, this painting becomes ever more significant.
The painting itself was left unsigned and untitled. At starting time glance it appears to be a still life. His tragic pallet has been transformed into a more joyful i and the household objects seem to have taken on a life of their own. They seem virtually to dance and greet usa or to wave cheerio. Behind them is a gilt sphere and in the upper left-manus corner a collection of forms which seem to exist the gateway to some other world. We can sense the imminence of expiry when we notice the picture within the picture show, in which an angel wrestles with death. The cloth beneath the green teapot and sculpture is scattered with flowers, reminiscent of a grave.
Earlier in his painting life Klee wrote of his work that it came from the realm of the dead, a realm he felt close to, although never close enough. Now facing the certainty of his own decease, he had to make that poetic statement a reality. To dice knowing that one has accomplished something is a comfort of sorts. Klee was asked to make peace with his death in the face of the apparent devastation of all he held dear.
The unsigned, unnamed painting is a visual verse form to that which is discontinued. As Klee had to endure and struggle with his ain situation and that of the earth, the tragic vein of his work is replaced by a different tone. Through facing his demons, he can start to depict a new mood. He is without self-pity and illusion; he has cleaved through the nighttime to a new possibility. He has achieved that wondrous affair, which nosotros are all asked at least to try to exercise: to make friends with the awful face of death. Through this, we gain an inkling not just of that which is so awe-ful, in the true sense of the word; we may gain an clue likewise of a new world, one which is shot through with meaning, goodness and a new task.
Rudolf Steiner wrote that all new ideas for the time to come come from the realm of the dead. Perhaps Paul Klee left this motion picture unsigned and unfinished because, now that he was at terminal well-nigh enough to the source of his work, he wanted to leave behind a legacy for those he left backside to fulfil. In the face of the nowadays crisis with all its insecurity and suffering and all its unexpected silvery linings, such a thought tin give united states of america backbone and marvel to hear what the present ideas for the future may be.
– Deborah Ravetz
Written for the Newsletter of The Christian Community in Forest Row during lockdown, to provide content in a time when information technology'due south not possible to hold talks.
Source: http://deborahravetz.org/art-does-not-reproduce-the-visible-rather-it-makes-visible
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