Pedagogical Sketchbook [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy "For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space." * This statement, written in 1923 by Paul Klee, was the Leitmotif of a creative life that derived almost equal inspiration from painting and from music. Man painted and danced long before he learned to write and construct. The senses of form and tone are his primordial heritage. Paul Klee fused both of these creative impulses into a new entity. His forms are derived from nature, inspired by observation of shape and cyclic change but their appearance only matters in so far as it symbolizes an inner actuality that receives meaning from its relationship to the cosmos. There is a common agreement among men on the place and function of external features: eye, leg, roof, sail, star. In Paul Klee's pictures they are used as beacons, pointing away from the surface into a spiritual reality. Just as a magician performs the miraculous with objects of utter familiarity, such as cards, handkerchiefs, coins, rabbits, so Paul Klee uses the familiar object in unfamiliar relationships to materialize the unknown. The Symbolic Expressionists and the Cubists during the first decade of the Twentieth Century had already questioned the validity of Academic Naturalism. Their painting had looked below the surface with the analytical eye of psychology and x-ray. But the multi-layered figures of Kirchner and Kokoschka or the simultaneous views of Braque and Picasso, were analytical—statements, resting statically on the canvas. Klee's figures and forms are not only transparent, as if seen through a fluoroscope; they exist in a magnetic field of cross currents: lines, forms, splotches, arrows, color waves. As if it were a symphonic composition, the main motif moves from variation to variation in its relationship to other objects on the canvas. A bird in THE TWITTERING MACHINE, for instance, is different from all other birds through its relationship to transmisión belt, crank shaft, and musical notations, floating in the air. Without contradicting himself, Klee could confess to "communication ¦ Quotolioni in Ihii introduction ore from Poul Kle«, Palht ol th» Study of Noturt (Weg. d*t Notur-•tudium,). Yearbook o( th. Stoatliche Bouhoui, W.imar, 1919-1923, Bouhaui V.rlag, W.imor-Mu*nch«n; and from th« Fmdagogicol Sketchbook.