Welcome back to the Deep Dive. So today we are
diving into the world of an artist who is, I
mean, he's just fundamentally unclassifiable.
That's probably the best word for him. We're
talking about Paul Klee, the man who started
out as this concert level violinist, but ended
up... Well, he ended up helping to define what
modern art even is. And that tension you just
mentioned, that's the whole key to understanding
him. The struggle between being this classical
musician and, you know, this radical modern painter.
He's maybe the great synthesizer of the 20th
century. Synthesizer. I like that. Because when
you look at his work, you see bits of everything,
right? Everything. There's expressionism, cubism,
a lot of surrealism, pure abstraction. But he
never really belonged to any one of those camps.
It was always just, well, Klee. fiercely individual.
And everything we've looked at for today's deep
dive points to the fact that his influence wasn't
just visual, it was deeply intellectual. Oh,
absolutely. So our mission today is to really
synthesize his whole journey from that initial
struggle to his big breakthrough with color and
then into his role as a theorist, where his ideas
might actually be as important as his paintings.
That's the crux of it, really. Klee wasn't just
making art. He was a revolutionary teacher. His
lectures, especially from his time at the Bauhaus,
they were later published as the Paul Klee Notebooks,
and they're just essential. Essential is maybe
an understatement. We're talking about a body
of theory that a lot of art historians put on
the same level for the 20th century as Leonardo
da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the
Renaissance. It's not an exaggeration. That's
how foundational it is. Da Vinci basically gave
artists a scientific roadmap for how to reproduce
the world you can see. Right. Klee, on the other
hand, gave them a kind of philosophical toolkit
for making the unseen visible. The processes,
the energies, it's a completely different way
of thinking about what art is for. Okay, so let's
try to get our arms around this body of work.
Over 10 ,000 pieces. That's a lot. It's a staggering
amount. Paintings, drawings, etchings. Across
all of that, what are the things that... just
scream pulkily. It's often a mix of opposites.
You've got this very dry, almost sarcastic humor.
Right, the absurdity. Exactly. And then you have
that famous childlike perspective, which, you
know, isn't him being naive. It's a very deliberate
choice, a kind of simplified line he uses to
ask these really complex philosophical questions.
And that simplicity is what lets him weave in
all his personal moods, his kind of esoteric
beliefs, and of course his musicality. It all
comes back to the music. He's literally composing
on the canvas, creating visual harmony, visual
dissonance. To give everyone a mental picture,
maybe we should mention a few of the big ones
right off the bat. Good idea. You've probably
seen Angelus Novus from 1920. It's this haunting
image of an angel. The one Walter Benjamin bought
and wrote about so famously. That's the one.
Then there's the geometric portrait, Senecio,
from 1922, The Old Man's Head. It's so abstract,
but also so full of emotion. And my personal
favorite, The Twittering Machine, also 1922.
It just perfectly captures that mix of whimsical
and... Deeply cynical that you were talking about.
It really does. So, yeah, we'll use those as
anchors. We're going to trace his story from
the beginning. Start with him as this musical
prodigy who can't figure out color. And the big
aha moment in North Africa, his decade as a master
at the Bauhaus and then the final years, the
defiant, incredibly productive period when he
was battling illness and, well, the Nazis. It's
quite a journey. OK, let's start at the beginning
then with Paul Klee, the musician. The music
is everything at first. He was born in 1879 near
Bern in Switzerland into a house that was just
saturated with music. His parents were musicians.
Both professionals. His father, Hans Wilhelm
Klee, was a German music teacher, and his mother,
Ida Marie, was a Swiss singer. In that house,
art was music. It was the family business. And
he was good. I mean, really good. He was a prodigy.
He started violin at age 7 and by 11. 11 years
old. He was so skilled, he was invited to play
as an extraordinary member of the Burn Music
Association. So he was basically playing professionally
with adults as a preteen. He had a whole career
path laid out for him, which makes his decision
to pivot to visual arts in his teens so well.
So dramatic. It sounds like an act of rebellion.
It was, partly. But it was also philosophical.
He absolutely loved the classics Bach, Mozart,
the structure of 18th and 19th century music.
But he looked at the modern music being made
at the time and he just, he felt it lacked meaning.
So he felt like music's best days were behind
it. In a way, yeah. He wrote that he didn't find
the idea of creating music attractive in view
of the decline in the history of musical achievement.
He felt trapped by its history. But with art,
he saw an open field. Exactly. A place where
he could be a pioneer instead of just following
a tradition. So he chooses this radical freedom
over a safe, predictable career. And that tells
you a lot about him right there. So that freedom
leads him to Munich, to the Academy of Fine Arts
in 98. And he finds he's good at one thing right
away. Drawing. He was a natural, a magnificent
draftsman. His skill with line was just innate.
But then we get to the big problem. the great
struggle of his early life dollar he just couldn't
get it he was brutally honest about it he wrote
in his journal that he had no natural color sense
and it wasn't a small thing for him it was a
huge artistic crisis at one point he writes that
he realized he probably would never learn to
paint it's just wild to hear that knowing the
work he would eventually create It shows that
even geniuses have these huge blind spots they
have to work through. And that struggle gets
even worse when he takes a trip to Italy around
1901. He sees the light, the colors of the masters,
and he's just overwhelmed. But he can't do it
himself. No, he knows it's important. He writes
that a long struggle lies in store for me in
this field of color. Because for him, color wasn't
just pigment. It represented, and this is a quote,
optimism and nobility in art. And his own work
at this point was very much not that. Not at
all. His early work is all black and white. It's
satirical, pessimistic, even grotesque. So he
poured all that drafting skill and that dry wit
into graphic arts, like etching. Exactly. You
see it perfectly in his first exhibited works,
a cycle of 11 etchings called the Inventions
from around 1903 to 1905. And he called them
surrealistic outposts, which is fascinating because
that's... decades before surrealism was even
a movement right he was tapping into that same
interest in the absurd the grotesque the way
you can distort reality to show a deeper uglier
truth about society he was reading these satirical
poets like alfred jerry can you give us an example
oh the best one is two men supposing the other
to be in a higher position what a title it's
brilliant it shows these two naked distorted
figures some people think they're supposed to
be emperor wilhelm ii and french joseph i and
they're just bowing and scraping to each other
because without their uniforms their insignia
all the outward signs of power are gone they're
trapped in this endless loop of social anxiety
Assuming the other guy is more important. It's
a perfect takedown of political posturing. Classically.
But he was also experimenting with materials
even then, right? Not just etching. Yes, he developed
this really interesting technique called ver
-eglemise. Reverse painting on glass. Sort of.
He would coat a pane of glass with black paint
and then use a needle to scratch the drawing
into the paint from behind. So the image is created
by removing the darkness. It sounds incredibly
delicate. It is. It creates this very fine, almost
ethereal line. He made 57 of them, including
a really striking portrait of his father. But
even with all this experimentation, his career
was just not taking off. And real life was setting
in. He married a pianist, Lily Stumpf, in 1906.
And Lily was really the breadwinner. She taught
piano lessons, she performed, she paid the bills.
Klee, meanwhile, was the house husband. He took
care of the home, tended to his art, and he even
tried to become a magazine illustrator, but that
didn't work out. So we have this picture of a
future master just... struggling, doing chores,
writing music reviews to make a little money
and just feeling stuck. He was completely stuck.
He knew he was a great draftsman, but he didn't
have the recognition. And more importantly, he
didn't have the vocabulary of color. He needed
a breakthrough. And that breakthrough starts
to happen around 1911. Yes. 1911 is when his
world finally starts to open up. He gets connected
with the heart of the German avant -garde. Dear
Blau Reiter, the Blue Reiter group. Exactly.
He meets Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and
he's immediately brought into their circle. This
is his intellectual home. Finally, he's found
people who are thinking about art, about spirituality
and color in the same way he wants to. And yet,
there's a real irony here. When he participates
in the second Blue Reiter exhibition in 1912,
he's still the black and white guy. His 17 pieces
are in a section literally called Schwarzweiss.
Black -white. He's at the party, but he's not
quite on the dance floor yet. A perfect way to
put it. The ideas were sinking in, though. He
goes to Paris in 1912 and sees the Cubists, and
especially the work of Robert Delaunay. Who is
all about pure painting. Right. Using bold color
as the structure itself, not just as something
you use to fill in a drawing. And Klee was inspired,
but he was still hesitant. He knew he still had
a long struggle ahead. He needed something more
than just an idea. He needed a shock to the system.
And that shock arrives in the spring of 1914.
The trip to Tunisia with August Mack and Louis
Maurier. This is, without a doubt, the single
most important event in his artistic life. It
was the light, wasn't it? It was the light. The
sheer intensity of the North African sun, the
vibrancy of the colors in the markets and the
architecture. It just... broke through 12 years
of struggle in an instant. And he documented
that moment in his journal with what has to be
his most famous quote. It's incredible. He writes,
color has taken possession of me. No longer do
I have to chase after it. I know that it has
hold of me forever. Color and I are one. I am
a painter. I am a painter. After all those years
of doubt, it sounds like a religious conversion.
It absolutely was. And it immediately changed
how he worked. He completely abandoned trying
to be faithful to nature. He wasn't painting
what Tunisia looked like. He was painting what
it felt like. And this is where the musician
and the painter finally become one person. 100%.
He develops this new method where he uses colored
rectangles or blocks as his basic unit. Like
a musical note. Exactly like a musical note.
He starts combining these color blocks to create
visual harmony using complementary colors or
even creating dissonance with clashing colors.
The whole painting is structured like a musical
composition. Complete synthesis. And you see
it right away in his first abstract piece in
the style of Kairouan. You do. It's a grid of
colored shapes. It's his new language. But this
incredible personal breakthrough runs headlong
into a global catastrophe. World War I. It starts
just weeks after he gets back from Tunisia. And
it hits his circle hard. His friends, Mac and
Mark, are both killed on the battlefield. That
must have been devastating. It was, but his art
became a kind of shield. He kept working, channeling
his feelings into pieces like death for the idea.
But his own wartime experience was unusual. He
gets conscripted in 1916. He does, but he never
sees the front lines. First, he's assigned to
paint camouflage on aircraft. Which is strangely
poetic, isn't it? An artist obsessed with color
and illusion. It really is. But his luckiest
break was getting transferred to a clerk's job
for the treasurer at a flying school. It was
boring, but it was safe. And crucially, it allowed
him to get a small room outside the barracks
where he could just keep painting. Unbelievable.
So he's a soldier by day and a revolutionary
artist by night. Pretty much. And he creates
some of his most complex work during this time.
A piece like Ab Ovo from 1917. He's using watercolor
on gauze, on paper, over a chalk ground, creating
these incredibly rich textures. And people were
noticing. the art market actually starts responding
while he's still in the army. It's amazing. By
1917, critics are already calling him the best
of the new German artists. His career just explodes.
In the middle of a war, he goes from a struggling
artist to an acclaimed master. And that acclaim
is what propels him straight into his next and
maybe most influential role. the master at the
Bauhaus. His career as a teacher really takes
off right after the war. He gets a big contract
with the dealer, Hans Goltz, and has a huge successful
retrospective in 1920 with over 300 works. So
he's a big name now, a desirable hire for a radical
new school like the Bauhaus. Exactly. He joins
the faculty in January 1921 and stays for a decade.
He's a form master teaching in the bookbinding,
stained glass, and mural workshops. He's all
over the place. And he loved the intellectual
energy there, right? He said he approved of the
forces competing one with the other if the result
is achievement. He thrived on it. And it helped
that his old friend Kandinsky joined the staff
in 1922. They were the two theoretical pillars
of the school. Which brings us back to those
legendary notebooks. Okay, so what makes them
so revolutionary? What was he actually teaching
that was so different? Well... He wasn't just
teaching students how to make art. He was teaching
them how to think about the process of creation
itself. He wanted to make the forces that generate
form visible. Forces, like what, physics? Sort
of, yeah. Kinetic energy, the way a line moves,
the way a plane expands. He used this famous
analogy of a tree. He'd say the roots of the
tree are the unseen laws of nature and geometry.
The trunk is the artist who channels those laws.
And the crown, the leaves and branches, that's
the finished work of art. So don't just copy
the crown. Understand the roots. Exactly. He
taught that a line isn't static. A line, he said,
is a point going for a walk. It has energy. It
has a story. It's a whole philosophy of creation.
And while he's developing these theories, he's
also trying to get the work seen internationally.
Right. That's Dai Blauvir, the Blue Four. In
1923, he forms this group with Kandinsky, Feininger,
and Jelinski. It was basically a marketing collective
to get their work exhibited in the United States.
And it worked. His reputation just exploded.
The French surrealists in Paris absolutely loved
him. Why did he connect so much with them? They
were drawn to his dreamlike quality, what they
called his partially morbid motifs. His work
looked like it came directly from the subconscious,
like automatic writing in visual form. And that
brings us back to Angelus Novus. The angel of
history. The philosopher Walter Benjamin buys
this little drawing and writes this incredible
interpretation of it. That the angel is looking
at the past, seeing only a pile of rubble, while
a storm from paradise, which we call progress,
is blowing him helplessly into the future. That's
a heavy interpretation for what looks like a
child's drawing. And that's Klee's genius. He
packs these huge, tragic ideas into simple lines.
You see it again in the twittering machine. Which
looks so charming and whimsical on the surface.
Right. It's four little birds on a wire attached
to a crank. But if you look closer, it's actually
a pretty sharp critique of technology. The birds
aren't singing freely. They're being forced to
twitter by the machine. Their natural song has
been mechanized. He's commenting on how technology
can strip living things of their freedom, of
their self -determination. So he's using this
simple visual language to talk about really complex
adult ideas. Always. And he's perfecting it throughout
the 20s with masterpieces like Main Road and
Byways in 1929, which is just this stunningly
complex geometric landscape. He also creates
his biggest, most ambitious work around this
time after a trip to Egypt. Ad Parnassum from
1932. It's considered his masterpiece and it's
huge for him, at least. It's the culmination
of everything he's been teaching and thinking
about. Absolutely. The title refers to Mount
Parnassus, home of the Muses. image is a pyramid
with a sun above it. And the way he built it
is just incredible. It's not painted with brushstrokes,
is it? No, it's constructed from thousands of
tiny, individually stamped dots of paint. It's
his take on pointillism. It shimmers. It's a
work that synthesizes color theory, geometry,
music, mythology, everything. It's the peak.
The absolute peak of his time as a master theorist
in a stable, acclaimed position in Germany. But
just as he hits that peak, the world falls apart.
The change is brutal, and it is sudden. Klee
leads the Bauhaus in 1931 and is teaching at
the Dusseldorf Academy. But by 1933, the Nazi
regime is in power, and their war on modern art
begins. And Klee is a major target. An immediate
one. A Nazi newspaper attacks him, calling him
a typical Galician Jew, which is a complete fabrication,
but it didn't matter. He was fired from his job.
Fired in April 1933. And then the Gestapo searched
his home. This man who had served Germany in
World War I was now an enemy of the state. And
he responded to that with a painting struck from
the list. A devastating self -portrait. It's
dark, abstract. His eyes are closed. His lips
are sealed. And on the back of the figure's head,
he painted a large black X. He's literally been
crossed off. Rejected by the country he called
home. He and his family had no choice. They fled
to Switzerland later that year. But the persecution
continues even after he's gone. Oh, yes. In 1937,
17 of his paintings are put in the infamous Degenerate
Art Exhibition. And then the Nazis seize over
100 of his works from German museums. And that's
not just history. Some of those restitution cases
for looted art are still ongoing today. It's
a wound that hasn't fully healed. And on top
of this political catastrophe, he's hit with
a huge personal one. He starts to get sick. This
is when he develops scleroderma. Yes. It's a
terrible autoimmune disease that hardens your
body's connective tissues. It was incredibly
painful. It made it hard for him to even swallow,
let alone hold a brush. And it just crushed his
creative output. It did. In 1936, a man who usually
made hundreds of works a year, he produced only
25 pictures. The silence is deafening. But somehow
he comes back, man. He does. friends like kandinsky
and picasso visit which lifts his spirits and
what happens next is one of the most incredible
stories of defiance in art history he starts
working again he doesn't just start working again
in 1939 despite the pain despite the political
darkness he creates over 1200 works it's the
most productive year of his entire life that's
just staggering and his style changes again doesn't
it it becomes simpler bolder the lines are heavier
more like calligraphy the blocks of color bigger.
It's a style that reflects his mood, which could
swing from deep pessimism to a kind of cautious
optimism. And his themes become very direct.
He's dealing with his own fate and the fate of
the world. You see it in a piece like Revolution
of the Viaducts. It's an anti -fascist painting
where the arches of a bridge are literally breaking
away, refusing to be linked together in a chain.
It's architecture as rebellion. And then there
are the works about mortality. Death and Fire
from 1940 is the most direct. He actually embeds
the German word for death, Tod, into the figure's
face. The T is the nose, the O and D are the
eyes and mouth. He's staring right at it. In
his last months, he drew angels. 50 of them.
Final exploration. He died on June 29, 1940.
And there's one last terrible irony to his story.
His citizenship. He was born in Switzerland,
but he had German citizenship through his father.
When he fled Germany, he applied to become a
Swiss citizen. But the Swiss authorities dragged
their feet. They thought his art was too revolutionary,
too, well, too degenerate. You're kidding. His
application was finally approved six days after
he died. Unbelievable. He was rejected by his
home country until it was too late. But his legacy
was secure. His epitaph, which he chose himself,
says it all. I cannot be grasped in the here
and now, for my dwelling place is as much among
the dead as the yet unborn. Let's talk a bit
more about that legacy. He had this unique visual
language, this pictorial writing. Builder's shrift,
yeah. He was also a poet, and he would weave
lines from his poems, or just letters, directly
into his paintings. The text and the image became
one thing. Which is basically concrete poetry.
Decades before it was a thing. He was so ahead
of his time. And then there's my favorite part
of his legacy. The hand puppets. The hand puppets.
Yes. He made 50 of them for his son Felix out
of things he found around the house bones, matchboxes,
bits of wool. There are these wonderfully weird,
grotesque little sculptures. It shows you the
playfulness that was always there alongside the
deep theory. And that playful structural quality
in his work went on to inspire so many modern
composers. It did. The American composer Gunther
Schuller wrote a whole suite called Seven Studies
on Themes of Paul Klee with a movement for twittering
machine. Composers could literally look at his
paintings and see a musical score. So his work
is preserved now at the Zentrum Paul Klee in
Bern. But you can't see it all at once. No, and
that's a critical point. He used so many experimental,
fragile materials, inks, and paints that are
incredibly sensitive to light. So they have to
rest. Exactly. Most of his work has to spend
long periods in dark storage to keep from fading
or deteriorating. They can only show about 150
pieces at a time. The work that made the invisible
visible is itself physically vulnerable to light.
It's a powerful metaphor for his whole life,
really. It is. When you look back at his whole
journey, you know, from the frustrated musician
who couldn't figure out color to this master
who brought music and poetry and painting all
together, you just see this totally unique vision.
So what's the big takeaway for us? For me, it's
that his life shows that mastery isn't a gift.
It's a struggle. He was honest about what he
couldn't do, and he just worked at it for over
a decade until he broke through. And that his
genius was in synthesis. He didn't choose between
music and painting. He used one to solve the
problems of the other. Which brings us to a final
thought for you to take away, and it comes from
Klee himself. He famously wrote, art does not
reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible.
So think about that. He used his simple childlike
style not to show you what a bridge looks like.
but to make the idea of rebellion visible. He
didn't just paint a face. He made mortality visible.
He forces us to look beneath the surface. So
the question for you is, what in your own life
have you maybe dismissed as simple or naive or
just playful that might actually be making something
much deeper visible? That's the challenge of
Paul Klee, using the simple day to reveal the
complex. Thank you for joining us for this deep
dive. We'll see you next time.