The excerpt above is from On Modern Art, the 1924 treatise from the great Swiss artist Paul Klee, someone who I have featured here a number of times over the years. Yesterday, I wrote about how it often feels like everything has been done before. With Klee, I often wonder if he was one of the exceptions to that rule.
His work always felt like it was a jumping off point, an origin, rather than an extension of something that had come before. It was work that didn’t owe anything to the past and set the able for the future.
I know for me, he was a big influence if only in his attitude and the distinctness of his work. I always think of his work in terms of the color– sometimes muted yet intense and always having a melodic harmony to it.
It always feels like music to me.
I like his idea that the world is in the process of creation, a constant and ongoing Genesis, and that it is not a final form. It allows for visionary work, for imagining other present worlds that extend beyond our perception because, as he writes, “In its present shape it is not the only possible world.”
And to me, that is an exciting proposition, one that gives my little created world viability.
This was a reworking of a post from back in 2015. It’s the post I needed this morning.
Southern Gardens- Paul Klee
Redtree Times 