WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. So today we are 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:08.480 diving into the world of an artist who is, I 00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:10.640 mean, he's just fundamentally unclassifiable. 00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:12.439 That's probably the best word for him. We're 00:00:12.439 --> 00:00:14.359 talking about Paul Klee, the man who started 00:00:14.359 --> 00:00:17.480 out as this concert level violinist, but ended 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:19.710 up... Well, he ended up helping to define what 00:00:19.710 --> 00:00:22.129 modern art even is. And that tension you just 00:00:22.129 --> 00:00:23.969 mentioned, that's the whole key to understanding 00:00:23.969 --> 00:00:26.469 him. The struggle between being this classical 00:00:26.469 --> 00:00:29.390 musician and, you know, this radical modern painter. 00:00:29.829 --> 00:00:32.409 He's maybe the great synthesizer of the 20th 00:00:32.409 --> 00:00:34.929 century. Synthesizer. I like that. Because when 00:00:34.929 --> 00:00:36.890 you look at his work, you see bits of everything, 00:00:37.030 --> 00:00:39.570 right? Everything. There's expressionism, cubism, 00:00:39.609 --> 00:00:43.450 a lot of surrealism, pure abstraction. But he 00:00:43.450 --> 00:00:45.270 never really belonged to any one of those camps. 00:00:45.390 --> 00:00:48.200 It was always just, well, Klee. fiercely individual. 00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:50.399 And everything we've looked at for today's deep 00:00:50.399 --> 00:00:52.920 dive points to the fact that his influence wasn't 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:55.659 just visual, it was deeply intellectual. Oh, 00:00:55.659 --> 00:00:58.100 absolutely. So our mission today is to really 00:00:58.100 --> 00:01:01.600 synthesize his whole journey from that initial 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:04.480 struggle to his big breakthrough with color and 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.920 then into his role as a theorist, where his ideas 00:01:06.920 --> 00:01:08.840 might actually be as important as his paintings. 00:01:09.079 --> 00:01:11.620 That's the crux of it, really. Klee wasn't just 00:01:11.620 --> 00:01:14.299 making art. He was a revolutionary teacher. His 00:01:14.299 --> 00:01:16.560 lectures, especially from his time at the Bauhaus, 00:01:16.799 --> 00:01:19.480 they were later published as the Paul Klee Notebooks, 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:22.019 and they're just essential. Essential is maybe 00:01:22.019 --> 00:01:24.079 an understatement. We're talking about a body 00:01:24.079 --> 00:01:26.280 of theory that a lot of art historians put on 00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:29.620 the same level for the 20th century as Leonardo 00:01:29.620 --> 00:01:32.200 da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:34.280 Renaissance. It's not an exaggeration. That's 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:36.700 how foundational it is. Da Vinci basically gave 00:01:36.700 --> 00:01:39.500 artists a scientific roadmap for how to reproduce 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:41.900 the world you can see. Right. Klee, on the other 00:01:41.900 --> 00:01:44.120 hand, gave them a kind of philosophical toolkit 00:01:44.120 --> 00:01:47.019 for making the unseen visible. The processes, 00:01:47.379 --> 00:01:50.019 the energies, it's a completely different way 00:01:50.019 --> 00:01:52.480 of thinking about what art is for. Okay, so let's 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:54.040 try to get our arms around this body of work. 00:01:54.219 --> 00:01:57.819 Over 10 ,000 pieces. That's a lot. It's a staggering 00:01:57.819 --> 00:02:00.659 amount. Paintings, drawings, etchings. Across 00:02:00.659 --> 00:02:02.439 all of that, what are the things that... just 00:02:02.439 --> 00:02:05.980 scream pulkily. It's often a mix of opposites. 00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:08.939 You've got this very dry, almost sarcastic humor. 00:02:09.159 --> 00:02:11.419 Right, the absurdity. Exactly. And then you have 00:02:11.419 --> 00:02:14.900 that famous childlike perspective, which, you 00:02:14.900 --> 00:02:17.219 know, isn't him being naive. It's a very deliberate 00:02:17.219 --> 00:02:20.340 choice, a kind of simplified line he uses to 00:02:20.340 --> 00:02:22.879 ask these really complex philosophical questions. 00:02:22.939 --> 00:02:25.639 And that simplicity is what lets him weave in 00:02:25.639 --> 00:02:28.520 all his personal moods, his kind of esoteric 00:02:28.520 --> 00:02:31.469 beliefs, and of course his musicality. It all 00:02:31.469 --> 00:02:33.949 comes back to the music. He's literally composing 00:02:33.949 --> 00:02:36.889 on the canvas, creating visual harmony, visual 00:02:36.889 --> 00:02:39.210 dissonance. To give everyone a mental picture, 00:02:39.490 --> 00:02:41.090 maybe we should mention a few of the big ones 00:02:41.090 --> 00:02:42.810 right off the bat. Good idea. You've probably 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:45.849 seen Angelus Novus from 1920. It's this haunting 00:02:45.849 --> 00:02:48.689 image of an angel. The one Walter Benjamin bought 00:02:48.689 --> 00:02:50.550 and wrote about so famously. That's the one. 00:02:50.990 --> 00:02:53.090 Then there's the geometric portrait, Senecio, 00:02:53.229 --> 00:02:57.090 from 1922, The Old Man's Head. It's so abstract, 00:02:57.189 --> 00:02:59.590 but also so full of emotion. And my personal 00:02:59.590 --> 00:03:02.610 favorite, The Twittering Machine, also 1922. 00:03:02.949 --> 00:03:05.830 It just perfectly captures that mix of whimsical 00:03:05.830 --> 00:03:09.259 and... Deeply cynical that you were talking about. 00:03:09.379 --> 00:03:11.259 It really does. So, yeah, we'll use those as 00:03:11.259 --> 00:03:12.979 anchors. We're going to trace his story from 00:03:12.979 --> 00:03:15.340 the beginning. Start with him as this musical 00:03:15.340 --> 00:03:18.020 prodigy who can't figure out color. And the big 00:03:18.020 --> 00:03:21.780 aha moment in North Africa, his decade as a master 00:03:21.780 --> 00:03:25.300 at the Bauhaus and then the final years, the 00:03:25.300 --> 00:03:28.439 defiant, incredibly productive period when he 00:03:28.439 --> 00:03:31.259 was battling illness and, well, the Nazis. It's 00:03:31.259 --> 00:03:32.960 quite a journey. OK, let's start at the beginning 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:35.610 then with Paul Klee, the musician. The music 00:03:35.610 --> 00:03:38.770 is everything at first. He was born in 1879 near 00:03:38.770 --> 00:03:41.050 Bern in Switzerland into a house that was just 00:03:41.050 --> 00:03:43.210 saturated with music. His parents were musicians. 00:03:43.490 --> 00:03:46.129 Both professionals. His father, Hans Wilhelm 00:03:46.129 --> 00:03:48.750 Klee, was a German music teacher, and his mother, 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:51.610 Ida Marie, was a Swiss singer. In that house, 00:03:51.650 --> 00:03:53.949 art was music. It was the family business. And 00:03:53.949 --> 00:03:56.449 he was good. I mean, really good. He was a prodigy. 00:03:56.449 --> 00:04:00.270 He started violin at age 7 and by 11. 11 years 00:04:00.270 --> 00:04:03.090 old. He was so skilled, he was invited to play 00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:05.050 as an extraordinary member of the Burn Music 00:04:05.050 --> 00:04:07.590 Association. So he was basically playing professionally 00:04:07.590 --> 00:04:10.550 with adults as a preteen. He had a whole career 00:04:10.550 --> 00:04:13.250 path laid out for him, which makes his decision 00:04:13.250 --> 00:04:16.829 to pivot to visual arts in his teens so well. 00:04:17.269 --> 00:04:19.170 So dramatic. It sounds like an act of rebellion. 00:04:19.490 --> 00:04:21.949 It was, partly. But it was also philosophical. 00:04:22.290 --> 00:04:26.110 He absolutely loved the classics Bach, Mozart, 00:04:26.329 --> 00:04:29.110 the structure of 18th and 19th century music. 00:04:29.149 --> 00:04:31.410 But he looked at the modern music being made 00:04:31.410 --> 00:04:33.810 at the time and he just, he felt it lacked meaning. 00:04:34.250 --> 00:04:36.310 So he felt like music's best days were behind 00:04:36.310 --> 00:04:38.870 it. In a way, yeah. He wrote that he didn't find 00:04:38.870 --> 00:04:41.550 the idea of creating music attractive in view 00:04:41.550 --> 00:04:43.990 of the decline in the history of musical achievement. 00:04:44.470 --> 00:04:47.490 He felt trapped by its history. But with art, 00:04:47.550 --> 00:04:50.350 he saw an open field. Exactly. A place where 00:04:50.350 --> 00:04:52.269 he could be a pioneer instead of just following 00:04:52.269 --> 00:04:54.889 a tradition. So he chooses this radical freedom 00:04:54.889 --> 00:04:57.449 over a safe, predictable career. And that tells 00:04:57.449 --> 00:04:59.389 you a lot about him right there. So that freedom 00:04:59.389 --> 00:05:01.709 leads him to Munich, to the Academy of Fine Arts 00:05:01.709 --> 00:05:04.910 in 98. And he finds he's good at one thing right 00:05:04.910 --> 00:05:07.569 away. Drawing. He was a natural, a magnificent 00:05:07.569 --> 00:05:10.990 draftsman. His skill with line was just innate. 00:05:11.329 --> 00:05:13.519 But then we get to the big problem. the great 00:05:13.519 --> 00:05:16.180 struggle of his early life dollar he just couldn't 00:05:16.180 --> 00:05:19.339 get it he was brutally honest about it he wrote 00:05:19.339 --> 00:05:22.540 in his journal that he had no natural color sense 00:05:22.540 --> 00:05:24.939 and it wasn't a small thing for him it was a 00:05:24.939 --> 00:05:28.139 huge artistic crisis at one point he writes that 00:05:28.139 --> 00:05:30.220 he realized he probably would never learn to 00:05:30.220 --> 00:05:33.100 paint it's just wild to hear that knowing the 00:05:33.100 --> 00:05:35.769 work he would eventually create It shows that 00:05:35.769 --> 00:05:38.730 even geniuses have these huge blind spots they 00:05:38.730 --> 00:05:40.430 have to work through. And that struggle gets 00:05:40.430 --> 00:05:42.490 even worse when he takes a trip to Italy around 00:05:42.490 --> 00:05:45.350 1901. He sees the light, the colors of the masters, 00:05:45.389 --> 00:05:47.610 and he's just overwhelmed. But he can't do it 00:05:47.610 --> 00:05:50.610 himself. No, he knows it's important. He writes 00:05:50.610 --> 00:05:53.089 that a long struggle lies in store for me in 00:05:53.089 --> 00:05:55.670 this field of color. Because for him, color wasn't 00:05:55.670 --> 00:05:58.350 just pigment. It represented, and this is a quote, 00:05:58.550 --> 00:06:02.459 optimism and nobility in art. And his own work 00:06:02.459 --> 00:06:04.819 at this point was very much not that. Not at 00:06:04.819 --> 00:06:07.420 all. His early work is all black and white. It's 00:06:07.420 --> 00:06:10.920 satirical, pessimistic, even grotesque. So he 00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:13.300 poured all that drafting skill and that dry wit 00:06:13.300 --> 00:06:16.800 into graphic arts, like etching. Exactly. You 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:19.120 see it perfectly in his first exhibited works, 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:22.180 a cycle of 11 etchings called the Inventions 00:06:22.180 --> 00:06:25.879 from around 1903 to 1905. And he called them 00:06:25.879 --> 00:06:29.439 surrealistic outposts, which is fascinating because 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:32.290 that's... decades before surrealism was even 00:06:32.290 --> 00:06:34.949 a movement right he was tapping into that same 00:06:34.949 --> 00:06:38.129 interest in the absurd the grotesque the way 00:06:38.129 --> 00:06:41.379 you can distort reality to show a deeper uglier 00:06:41.379 --> 00:06:44.379 truth about society he was reading these satirical 00:06:44.379 --> 00:06:46.699 poets like alfred jerry can you give us an example 00:06:46.699 --> 00:06:50.040 oh the best one is two men supposing the other 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:52.620 to be in a higher position what a title it's 00:06:52.620 --> 00:06:55.699 brilliant it shows these two naked distorted 00:06:55.699 --> 00:06:57.639 figures some people think they're supposed to 00:06:57.639 --> 00:07:00.240 be emperor wilhelm ii and french joseph i and 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:02.540 they're just bowing and scraping to each other 00:07:02.540 --> 00:07:05.199 because without their uniforms their insignia 00:07:05.199 --> 00:07:07.740 all the outward signs of power are gone they're 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:10.019 trapped in this endless loop of social anxiety 00:07:10.479 --> 00:07:12.399 Assuming the other guy is more important. It's 00:07:12.399 --> 00:07:14.819 a perfect takedown of political posturing. Classically. 00:07:14.959 --> 00:07:16.800 But he was also experimenting with materials 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:20.129 even then, right? Not just etching. Yes, he developed 00:07:20.129 --> 00:07:22.149 this really interesting technique called ver 00:07:22.149 --> 00:07:25.269 -eglemise. Reverse painting on glass. Sort of. 00:07:25.529 --> 00:07:28.430 He would coat a pane of glass with black paint 00:07:28.430 --> 00:07:31.250 and then use a needle to scratch the drawing 00:07:31.250 --> 00:07:34.430 into the paint from behind. So the image is created 00:07:34.430 --> 00:07:37.329 by removing the darkness. It sounds incredibly 00:07:37.329 --> 00:07:40.389 delicate. It is. It creates this very fine, almost 00:07:40.389 --> 00:07:43.990 ethereal line. He made 57 of them, including 00:07:43.990 --> 00:07:46.660 a really striking portrait of his father. But 00:07:46.660 --> 00:07:49.720 even with all this experimentation, his career 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:52.139 was just not taking off. And real life was setting 00:07:52.139 --> 00:07:55.199 in. He married a pianist, Lily Stumpf, in 1906. 00:07:55.560 --> 00:07:57.620 And Lily was really the breadwinner. She taught 00:07:57.620 --> 00:08:00.620 piano lessons, she performed, she paid the bills. 00:08:01.019 --> 00:08:03.519 Klee, meanwhile, was the house husband. He took 00:08:03.519 --> 00:08:05.779 care of the home, tended to his art, and he even 00:08:05.779 --> 00:08:07.759 tried to become a magazine illustrator, but that 00:08:07.759 --> 00:08:10.379 didn't work out. So we have this picture of a 00:08:10.379 --> 00:08:13.709 future master just... struggling, doing chores, 00:08:14.050 --> 00:08:16.089 writing music reviews to make a little money 00:08:16.089 --> 00:08:18.610 and just feeling stuck. He was completely stuck. 00:08:18.670 --> 00:08:20.670 He knew he was a great draftsman, but he didn't 00:08:20.670 --> 00:08:22.810 have the recognition. And more importantly, he 00:08:22.810 --> 00:08:24.930 didn't have the vocabulary of color. He needed 00:08:24.930 --> 00:08:27.029 a breakthrough. And that breakthrough starts 00:08:27.029 --> 00:08:30.569 to happen around 1911. Yes. 1911 is when his 00:08:30.569 --> 00:08:33.559 world finally starts to open up. He gets connected 00:08:33.559 --> 00:08:36.440 with the heart of the German avant -garde. Dear 00:08:36.440 --> 00:08:38.580 Blau Reiter, the Blue Reiter group. Exactly. 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:41.539 He meets Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and 00:08:41.539 --> 00:08:43.860 he's immediately brought into their circle. This 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:47.320 is his intellectual home. Finally, he's found 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:49.960 people who are thinking about art, about spirituality 00:08:49.960 --> 00:08:53.240 and color in the same way he wants to. And yet, 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:56.179 there's a real irony here. When he participates 00:08:56.179 --> 00:08:58.980 in the second Blue Reiter exhibition in 1912, 00:08:59.220 --> 00:09:02.539 he's still the black and white guy. His 17 pieces 00:09:02.539 --> 00:09:05.080 are in a section literally called Schwarzweiss. 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:07.220 Black -white. He's at the party, but he's not 00:09:07.220 --> 00:09:09.480 quite on the dance floor yet. A perfect way to 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:11.779 put it. The ideas were sinking in, though. He 00:09:11.779 --> 00:09:14.580 goes to Paris in 1912 and sees the Cubists, and 00:09:14.580 --> 00:09:16.539 especially the work of Robert Delaunay. Who is 00:09:16.539 --> 00:09:20.059 all about pure painting. Right. Using bold color 00:09:20.059 --> 00:09:22.320 as the structure itself, not just as something 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:24.960 you use to fill in a drawing. And Klee was inspired, 00:09:25.139 --> 00:09:27.629 but he was still hesitant. He knew he still had 00:09:27.629 --> 00:09:30.389 a long struggle ahead. He needed something more 00:09:30.389 --> 00:09:33.230 than just an idea. He needed a shock to the system. 00:09:33.470 --> 00:09:36.330 And that shock arrives in the spring of 1914. 00:09:36.830 --> 00:09:40.610 The trip to Tunisia with August Mack and Louis 00:09:40.610 --> 00:09:43.649 Maurier. This is, without a doubt, the single 00:09:43.649 --> 00:09:46.590 most important event in his artistic life. It 00:09:46.590 --> 00:09:48.350 was the light, wasn't it? It was the light. The 00:09:48.350 --> 00:09:51.210 sheer intensity of the North African sun, the 00:09:51.210 --> 00:09:53.149 vibrancy of the colors in the markets and the 00:09:53.149 --> 00:09:56.309 architecture. It just... broke through 12 years 00:09:56.309 --> 00:09:58.450 of struggle in an instant. And he documented 00:09:58.450 --> 00:10:01.350 that moment in his journal with what has to be 00:10:01.350 --> 00:10:03.789 his most famous quote. It's incredible. He writes, 00:10:03.929 --> 00:10:06.960 color has taken possession of me. No longer do 00:10:06.960 --> 00:10:08.679 I have to chase after it. I know that it has 00:10:08.679 --> 00:10:11.539 hold of me forever. Color and I are one. I am 00:10:11.539 --> 00:10:14.279 a painter. I am a painter. After all those years 00:10:14.279 --> 00:10:16.039 of doubt, it sounds like a religious conversion. 00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:18.940 It absolutely was. And it immediately changed 00:10:18.940 --> 00:10:21.559 how he worked. He completely abandoned trying 00:10:21.559 --> 00:10:23.919 to be faithful to nature. He wasn't painting 00:10:23.919 --> 00:10:25.960 what Tunisia looked like. He was painting what 00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:27.820 it felt like. And this is where the musician 00:10:27.820 --> 00:10:31.500 and the painter finally become one person. 100%. 00:10:31.500 --> 00:10:34.080 He develops this new method where he uses colored 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:37.539 rectangles or blocks as his basic unit. Like 00:10:37.539 --> 00:10:40.000 a musical note. Exactly like a musical note. 00:10:40.139 --> 00:10:42.940 He starts combining these color blocks to create 00:10:42.940 --> 00:10:46.419 visual harmony using complementary colors or 00:10:46.419 --> 00:10:48.919 even creating dissonance with clashing colors. 00:10:49.179 --> 00:10:51.700 The whole painting is structured like a musical 00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:54.519 composition. Complete synthesis. And you see 00:10:54.519 --> 00:10:57.240 it right away in his first abstract piece in 00:10:57.240 --> 00:10:59.879 the style of Kairouan. You do. It's a grid of 00:10:59.879 --> 00:11:02.179 colored shapes. It's his new language. But this 00:11:02.179 --> 00:11:04.620 incredible personal breakthrough runs headlong 00:11:04.620 --> 00:11:08.320 into a global catastrophe. World War I. It starts 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:11.120 just weeks after he gets back from Tunisia. And 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:14.179 it hits his circle hard. His friends, Mac and 00:11:14.179 --> 00:11:16.440 Mark, are both killed on the battlefield. That 00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:18.960 must have been devastating. It was, but his art 00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:22.159 became a kind of shield. He kept working, channeling 00:11:22.159 --> 00:11:24.440 his feelings into pieces like death for the idea. 00:11:24.600 --> 00:11:27.600 But his own wartime experience was unusual. He 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.179 gets conscripted in 1916. He does, but he never 00:11:30.179 --> 00:11:33.039 sees the front lines. First, he's assigned to 00:11:33.039 --> 00:11:35.460 paint camouflage on aircraft. Which is strangely 00:11:35.460 --> 00:11:37.799 poetic, isn't it? An artist obsessed with color 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:40.720 and illusion. It really is. But his luckiest 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:42.960 break was getting transferred to a clerk's job 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:45.419 for the treasurer at a flying school. It was 00:11:45.419 --> 00:11:48.539 boring, but it was safe. And crucially, it allowed 00:11:48.539 --> 00:11:50.919 him to get a small room outside the barracks 00:11:50.919 --> 00:11:53.019 where he could just keep painting. Unbelievable. 00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:55.480 So he's a soldier by day and a revolutionary 00:11:55.480 --> 00:11:58.299 artist by night. Pretty much. And he creates 00:11:58.299 --> 00:12:00.580 some of his most complex work during this time. 00:12:00.659 --> 00:12:05.120 A piece like Ab Ovo from 1917. He's using watercolor 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:09.139 on gauze, on paper, over a chalk ground, creating 00:12:09.139 --> 00:12:11.639 these incredibly rich textures. And people were 00:12:11.639 --> 00:12:14.200 noticing. the art market actually starts responding 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:16.899 while he's still in the army. It's amazing. By 00:12:16.899 --> 00:12:19.879 1917, critics are already calling him the best 00:12:19.879 --> 00:12:22.720 of the new German artists. His career just explodes. 00:12:23.080 --> 00:12:25.200 In the middle of a war, he goes from a struggling 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:27.860 artist to an acclaimed master. And that acclaim 00:12:27.860 --> 00:12:30.399 is what propels him straight into his next and 00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:32.980 maybe most influential role. the master at the 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:35.019 Bauhaus. His career as a teacher really takes 00:12:35.019 --> 00:12:37.139 off right after the war. He gets a big contract 00:12:37.139 --> 00:12:39.519 with the dealer, Hans Goltz, and has a huge successful 00:12:39.519 --> 00:12:42.740 retrospective in 1920 with over 300 works. So 00:12:42.740 --> 00:12:46.440 he's a big name now, a desirable hire for a radical 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:49.340 new school like the Bauhaus. Exactly. He joins 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:52.139 the faculty in January 1921 and stays for a decade. 00:12:52.799 --> 00:12:55.500 He's a form master teaching in the bookbinding, 00:12:55.659 --> 00:12:57.919 stained glass, and mural workshops. He's all 00:12:57.919 --> 00:12:59.539 over the place. And he loved the intellectual 00:12:59.539 --> 00:13:02.399 energy there, right? He said he approved of the 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:05.240 forces competing one with the other if the result 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:08.019 is achievement. He thrived on it. And it helped 00:13:08.019 --> 00:13:09.899 that his old friend Kandinsky joined the staff 00:13:09.899 --> 00:13:13.120 in 1922. They were the two theoretical pillars 00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:14.899 of the school. Which brings us back to those 00:13:14.899 --> 00:13:17.399 legendary notebooks. Okay, so what makes them 00:13:17.399 --> 00:13:19.399 so revolutionary? What was he actually teaching 00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:21.610 that was so different? Well... He wasn't just 00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:23.809 teaching students how to make art. He was teaching 00:13:23.809 --> 00:13:25.950 them how to think about the process of creation 00:13:25.950 --> 00:13:28.830 itself. He wanted to make the forces that generate 00:13:28.830 --> 00:13:32.509 form visible. Forces, like what, physics? Sort 00:13:32.509 --> 00:13:35.190 of, yeah. Kinetic energy, the way a line moves, 00:13:35.350 --> 00:13:37.990 the way a plane expands. He used this famous 00:13:37.990 --> 00:13:40.460 analogy of a tree. He'd say the roots of the 00:13:40.460 --> 00:13:42.960 tree are the unseen laws of nature and geometry. 00:13:43.259 --> 00:13:45.980 The trunk is the artist who channels those laws. 00:13:46.259 --> 00:13:49.740 And the crown, the leaves and branches, that's 00:13:49.740 --> 00:13:52.179 the finished work of art. So don't just copy 00:13:52.179 --> 00:13:55.090 the crown. Understand the roots. Exactly. He 00:13:55.090 --> 00:13:57.529 taught that a line isn't static. A line, he said, 00:13:57.590 --> 00:14:00.610 is a point going for a walk. It has energy. It 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:03.450 has a story. It's a whole philosophy of creation. 00:14:03.809 --> 00:14:06.049 And while he's developing these theories, he's 00:14:06.049 --> 00:14:07.889 also trying to get the work seen internationally. 00:14:08.250 --> 00:14:11.389 Right. That's Dai Blauvir, the Blue Four. In 00:14:11.389 --> 00:14:15.509 1923, he forms this group with Kandinsky, Feininger, 00:14:15.629 --> 00:14:18.230 and Jelinski. It was basically a marketing collective 00:14:18.230 --> 00:14:20.370 to get their work exhibited in the United States. 00:14:20.529 --> 00:14:23.200 And it worked. His reputation just exploded. 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:25.980 The French surrealists in Paris absolutely loved 00:14:25.980 --> 00:14:28.340 him. Why did he connect so much with them? They 00:14:28.340 --> 00:14:30.639 were drawn to his dreamlike quality, what they 00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:33.419 called his partially morbid motifs. His work 00:14:33.419 --> 00:14:35.299 looked like it came directly from the subconscious, 00:14:35.419 --> 00:14:38.080 like automatic writing in visual form. And that 00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:40.440 brings us back to Angelus Novus. The angel of 00:14:40.440 --> 00:14:43.759 history. The philosopher Walter Benjamin buys 00:14:43.759 --> 00:14:46.100 this little drawing and writes this incredible 00:14:46.100 --> 00:14:49.259 interpretation of it. That the angel is looking 00:14:49.259 --> 00:14:52.440 at the past, seeing only a pile of rubble, while 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.179 a storm from paradise, which we call progress, 00:14:55.480 --> 00:14:58.279 is blowing him helplessly into the future. That's 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:00.379 a heavy interpretation for what looks like a 00:15:00.379 --> 00:15:02.940 child's drawing. And that's Klee's genius. He 00:15:02.940 --> 00:15:05.919 packs these huge, tragic ideas into simple lines. 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:07.919 You see it again in the twittering machine. Which 00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:09.759 looks so charming and whimsical on the surface. 00:15:10.019 --> 00:15:12.419 Right. It's four little birds on a wire attached 00:15:12.419 --> 00:15:15.080 to a crank. But if you look closer, it's actually 00:15:15.080 --> 00:15:18.120 a pretty sharp critique of technology. The birds 00:15:18.120 --> 00:15:20.179 aren't singing freely. They're being forced to 00:15:20.179 --> 00:15:22.860 twitter by the machine. Their natural song has 00:15:22.860 --> 00:15:25.299 been mechanized. He's commenting on how technology 00:15:25.299 --> 00:15:28.080 can strip living things of their freedom, of 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.019 their self -determination. So he's using this 00:15:30.019 --> 00:15:33.559 simple visual language to talk about really complex 00:15:33.559 --> 00:15:36.580 adult ideas. Always. And he's perfecting it throughout 00:15:36.580 --> 00:15:40.000 the 20s with masterpieces like Main Road and 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:43.960 Byways in 1929, which is just this stunningly 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.879 complex geometric landscape. He also creates 00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:49.320 his biggest, most ambitious work around this 00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:52.779 time after a trip to Egypt. Ad Parnassum from 00:15:52.779 --> 00:15:56.139 1932. It's considered his masterpiece and it's 00:15:56.139 --> 00:15:58.419 huge for him, at least. It's the culmination 00:15:58.419 --> 00:16:00.019 of everything he's been teaching and thinking 00:16:00.019 --> 00:16:02.059 about. Absolutely. The title refers to Mount 00:16:02.059 --> 00:16:05.710 Parnassus, home of the Muses. image is a pyramid 00:16:05.710 --> 00:16:08.210 with a sun above it. And the way he built it 00:16:08.210 --> 00:16:10.850 is just incredible. It's not painted with brushstrokes, 00:16:10.850 --> 00:16:12.789 is it? No, it's constructed from thousands of 00:16:12.789 --> 00:16:15.190 tiny, individually stamped dots of paint. It's 00:16:15.190 --> 00:16:17.690 his take on pointillism. It shimmers. It's a 00:16:17.690 --> 00:16:19.710 work that synthesizes color theory, geometry, 00:16:20.070 --> 00:16:22.789 music, mythology, everything. It's the peak. 00:16:22.950 --> 00:16:25.750 The absolute peak of his time as a master theorist 00:16:25.750 --> 00:16:29.129 in a stable, acclaimed position in Germany. But 00:16:29.129 --> 00:16:31.750 just as he hits that peak, the world falls apart. 00:16:32.139 --> 00:16:34.820 The change is brutal, and it is sudden. Klee 00:16:34.820 --> 00:16:37.700 leads the Bauhaus in 1931 and is teaching at 00:16:37.700 --> 00:16:40.879 the Dusseldorf Academy. But by 1933, the Nazi 00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:43.779 regime is in power, and their war on modern art 00:16:43.779 --> 00:16:46.460 begins. And Klee is a major target. An immediate 00:16:46.460 --> 00:16:48.919 one. A Nazi newspaper attacks him, calling him 00:16:48.919 --> 00:16:51.759 a typical Galician Jew, which is a complete fabrication, 00:16:52.019 --> 00:16:54.159 but it didn't matter. He was fired from his job. 00:16:54.440 --> 00:16:58.480 Fired in April 1933. And then the Gestapo searched 00:16:58.480 --> 00:17:01.480 his home. This man who had served Germany in 00:17:01.480 --> 00:17:04.319 World War I was now an enemy of the state. And 00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:06.779 he responded to that with a painting struck from 00:17:06.779 --> 00:17:09.400 the list. A devastating self -portrait. It's 00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:12.720 dark, abstract. His eyes are closed. His lips 00:17:12.720 --> 00:17:15.059 are sealed. And on the back of the figure's head, 00:17:15.180 --> 00:17:18.839 he painted a large black X. He's literally been 00:17:18.839 --> 00:17:21.119 crossed off. Rejected by the country he called 00:17:21.119 --> 00:17:23.859 home. He and his family had no choice. They fled 00:17:23.859 --> 00:17:26.019 to Switzerland later that year. But the persecution 00:17:26.019 --> 00:17:29.279 continues even after he's gone. Oh, yes. In 1937, 00:17:29.480 --> 00:17:32.480 17 of his paintings are put in the infamous Degenerate 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:35.339 Art Exhibition. And then the Nazis seize over 00:17:35.339 --> 00:17:38.039 100 of his works from German museums. And that's 00:17:38.039 --> 00:17:40.079 not just history. Some of those restitution cases 00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:43.220 for looted art are still ongoing today. It's 00:17:43.220 --> 00:17:45.599 a wound that hasn't fully healed. And on top 00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:47.619 of this political catastrophe, he's hit with 00:17:47.619 --> 00:17:50.619 a huge personal one. He starts to get sick. This 00:17:50.619 --> 00:17:53.599 is when he develops scleroderma. Yes. It's a 00:17:53.599 --> 00:17:55.779 terrible autoimmune disease that hardens your 00:17:55.779 --> 00:17:57.940 body's connective tissues. It was incredibly 00:17:57.940 --> 00:18:00.059 painful. It made it hard for him to even swallow, 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:03.059 let alone hold a brush. And it just crushed his 00:18:03.059 --> 00:18:07.200 creative output. It did. In 1936, a man who usually 00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:09.960 made hundreds of works a year, he produced only 00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:14.539 25 pictures. The silence is deafening. But somehow 00:18:14.539 --> 00:18:17.859 he comes back, man. He does. friends like kandinsky 00:18:17.859 --> 00:18:21.460 and picasso visit which lifts his spirits and 00:18:21.460 --> 00:18:23.599 what happens next is one of the most incredible 00:18:23.599 --> 00:18:26.319 stories of defiance in art history he starts 00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:28.220 working again he doesn't just start working again 00:18:28.220 --> 00:18:31.299 in 1939 despite the pain despite the political 00:18:31.299 --> 00:18:35.359 darkness he creates over 1200 works it's the 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.039 most productive year of his entire life that's 00:18:38.039 --> 00:18:40.180 just staggering and his style changes again doesn't 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:43.240 it it becomes simpler bolder the lines are heavier 00:18:43.240 --> 00:18:46.390 more like calligraphy the blocks of color bigger. 00:18:46.609 --> 00:18:49.369 It's a style that reflects his mood, which could 00:18:49.369 --> 00:18:51.950 swing from deep pessimism to a kind of cautious 00:18:51.950 --> 00:18:54.369 optimism. And his themes become very direct. 00:18:54.589 --> 00:18:56.529 He's dealing with his own fate and the fate of 00:18:56.529 --> 00:18:58.710 the world. You see it in a piece like Revolution 00:18:58.710 --> 00:19:01.910 of the Viaducts. It's an anti -fascist painting 00:19:01.910 --> 00:19:04.369 where the arches of a bridge are literally breaking 00:19:04.369 --> 00:19:06.630 away, refusing to be linked together in a chain. 00:19:06.829 --> 00:19:09.369 It's architecture as rebellion. And then there 00:19:09.369 --> 00:19:11.950 are the works about mortality. Death and Fire 00:19:11.950 --> 00:19:15.670 from 1940 is the most direct. He actually embeds 00:19:15.670 --> 00:19:18.690 the German word for death, Tod, into the figure's 00:19:18.690 --> 00:19:21.750 face. The T is the nose, the O and D are the 00:19:21.750 --> 00:19:24.849 eyes and mouth. He's staring right at it. In 00:19:24.849 --> 00:19:27.819 his last months, he drew angels. 50 of them. 00:19:28.039 --> 00:19:31.319 Final exploration. He died on June 29, 1940. 00:19:32.180 --> 00:19:35.019 And there's one last terrible irony to his story. 00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:37.480 His citizenship. He was born in Switzerland, 00:19:37.559 --> 00:19:39.640 but he had German citizenship through his father. 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:41.960 When he fled Germany, he applied to become a 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:44.779 Swiss citizen. But the Swiss authorities dragged 00:19:44.779 --> 00:19:47.019 their feet. They thought his art was too revolutionary, 00:19:47.099 --> 00:19:50.220 too, well, too degenerate. You're kidding. His 00:19:50.220 --> 00:19:52.559 application was finally approved six days after 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:55.119 he died. Unbelievable. He was rejected by his 00:19:55.119 --> 00:19:57.710 home country until it was too late. But his legacy 00:19:57.710 --> 00:20:00.529 was secure. His epitaph, which he chose himself, 00:20:00.769 --> 00:20:04.049 says it all. I cannot be grasped in the here 00:20:04.049 --> 00:20:06.670 and now, for my dwelling place is as much among 00:20:06.670 --> 00:20:09.670 the dead as the yet unborn. Let's talk a bit 00:20:09.670 --> 00:20:12.269 more about that legacy. He had this unique visual 00:20:12.269 --> 00:20:14.609 language, this pictorial writing. Builder's shrift, 00:20:14.730 --> 00:20:17.690 yeah. He was also a poet, and he would weave 00:20:17.690 --> 00:20:20.170 lines from his poems, or just letters, directly 00:20:20.170 --> 00:20:22.829 into his paintings. The text and the image became 00:20:22.829 --> 00:20:25.569 one thing. Which is basically concrete poetry. 00:20:26.089 --> 00:20:28.190 Decades before it was a thing. He was so ahead 00:20:28.190 --> 00:20:29.930 of his time. And then there's my favorite part 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:33.049 of his legacy. The hand puppets. The hand puppets. 00:20:33.089 --> 00:20:36.509 Yes. He made 50 of them for his son Felix out 00:20:36.509 --> 00:20:38.970 of things he found around the house bones, matchboxes, 00:20:38.970 --> 00:20:41.230 bits of wool. There are these wonderfully weird, 00:20:41.470 --> 00:20:43.710 grotesque little sculptures. It shows you the 00:20:43.710 --> 00:20:46.910 playfulness that was always there alongside the 00:20:46.910 --> 00:20:49.509 deep theory. And that playful structural quality 00:20:49.509 --> 00:20:52.009 in his work went on to inspire so many modern 00:20:52.009 --> 00:20:55.269 composers. It did. The American composer Gunther 00:20:55.269 --> 00:20:57.609 Schuller wrote a whole suite called Seven Studies 00:20:57.609 --> 00:21:00.730 on Themes of Paul Klee with a movement for twittering 00:21:00.730 --> 00:21:03.170 machine. Composers could literally look at his 00:21:03.170 --> 00:21:05.789 paintings and see a musical score. So his work 00:21:05.789 --> 00:21:08.490 is preserved now at the Zentrum Paul Klee in 00:21:08.490 --> 00:21:11.420 Bern. But you can't see it all at once. No, and 00:21:11.420 --> 00:21:14.559 that's a critical point. He used so many experimental, 00:21:14.599 --> 00:21:17.700 fragile materials, inks, and paints that are 00:21:17.700 --> 00:21:20.160 incredibly sensitive to light. So they have to 00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:23.019 rest. Exactly. Most of his work has to spend 00:21:23.019 --> 00:21:25.759 long periods in dark storage to keep from fading 00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:28.640 or deteriorating. They can only show about 150 00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:31.680 pieces at a time. The work that made the invisible 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:34.480 visible is itself physically vulnerable to light. 00:21:34.680 --> 00:21:36.720 It's a powerful metaphor for his whole life, 00:21:36.799 --> 00:21:38.640 really. It is. When you look back at his whole 00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:40.420 journey, you know, from the frustrated musician 00:21:40.420 --> 00:21:42.660 who couldn't figure out color to this master 00:21:42.660 --> 00:21:44.900 who brought music and poetry and painting all 00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:47.380 together, you just see this totally unique vision. 00:21:47.599 --> 00:21:50.519 So what's the big takeaway for us? For me, it's 00:21:50.519 --> 00:21:53.160 that his life shows that mastery isn't a gift. 00:21:53.619 --> 00:21:56.089 It's a struggle. He was honest about what he 00:21:56.089 --> 00:21:58.450 couldn't do, and he just worked at it for over 00:21:58.450 --> 00:22:00.849 a decade until he broke through. And that his 00:22:00.849 --> 00:22:03.309 genius was in synthesis. He didn't choose between 00:22:03.309 --> 00:22:05.890 music and painting. He used one to solve the 00:22:05.890 --> 00:22:08.549 problems of the other. Which brings us to a final 00:22:08.549 --> 00:22:10.589 thought for you to take away, and it comes from 00:22:10.589 --> 00:22:13.529 Klee himself. He famously wrote, art does not 00:22:13.529 --> 00:22:16.470 reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible. 00:22:16.930 --> 00:22:19.769 So think about that. He used his simple childlike 00:22:19.769 --> 00:22:22.410 style not to show you what a bridge looks like. 00:22:22.799 --> 00:22:25.640 but to make the idea of rebellion visible. He 00:22:25.640 --> 00:22:28.279 didn't just paint a face. He made mortality visible. 00:22:28.460 --> 00:22:31.220 He forces us to look beneath the surface. So 00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:33.900 the question for you is, what in your own life 00:22:33.900 --> 00:22:37.400 have you maybe dismissed as simple or naive or 00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:39.920 just playful that might actually be making something 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:42.660 much deeper visible? That's the challenge of 00:22:42.660 --> 00:22:45.240 Paul Klee, using the simple day to reveal the 00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:47.140 complex. Thank you for joining us for this deep 00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:48.319 dive. We'll see you next time.