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This study examines the function and meaning of linguistic symbols in Klee's work.Using the artist's diaries, letters, lecture notes and visual allusions, K. Porter Aichele shows how these sources provide the framework for fresh interpretations of works ranging from letter forms in pictorial settings to visual texts.Klee's familiar line drawings are revealed as a radical reinterpretation of the ul pictora poesis tradition, through which the artist questioned whether there is a substantive difference between writing and drawing. ... Read more

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Like many of his Bauhaus contemporaries, Paul Klee (1879-1940) was deeply influenced by theater and the stage. Throughout his life Klee attended theatrical performances, from the opera to puppet shows, with an almost fanatical zeal, and characters from plays or opera--Hamlet, Falstaff and Don Giovanni, for example--populate his enigmatic visual world. Various types of character roles and theatrical elements, like clowns and masks, were firmly established themes in his repertoire, and as last year's delightful Paul Klee: Hand Puppets showed, he also delighted in puppetry, making bizarre bricolaged puppets out of household materials to amuse his son Felix. Primarily, though, Klee understood the sympathies between theater and life, absorbing the topos of the world as a stage into his observations: People became actors or marionettes and theatrical events touched upon scenes from everyday life. This publication sheds light on all of these aspects of Klee's fascination with the arts of the stage. A chronology gives a panoramic outline of his several encounters with the theater and a selection of works by contemporary artists makes it clear that Klee was not the only artist to be fascinated with the sharp-eyed perception of theatrical scenarios--the topic is one that continues to engage artists today. ... Read more

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In 1933, Paul Klee's work was branded as "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") by the National Socialists and he was dismissed from his professorial post at the Due sseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. This led him, together with his wife Lily, to return to his 'real home' of Bern. Here his avant-garde art was not understood and Klee found himself in unasked for isolation. In 1935, Klee started to suffer from a mysterious disease. The symptoms included changes to the skin and problems with the internal organs. In 1940 Paul Klee died, but it was only 10 years after his death that the illness was actually given the name 'scleroderma' in a publication about Klee. However, the diagnosis remained mere conjecture. Since his adolescence, the dermatologist and venereologist Dr. Hans Suter has been fascinated by Paul Klee and his art, and more than 30 years ago this fascination spurred him to commence research into the illness and its influence on the art of Paul Klee's final years. It was due to Dr. Suter's meticulous investigations that Klee's illness could be defined as 'diffuse systemic sclerosis'.In this book, the author assembles his findings and describes the rare and complex disease in a clear and comprehensible way. Further, he empathetically interprets more than 90 of Klee's late works. The point of view of a dermatologist renders a unique source of information. It provides, on one hand, new insights into everyday medical practices at the University of Bern in the 1930s, which will fascinate doctors and local historians alike. While, on the other hand, art historians and art lovers will be absorbed by the newly discovered links between Paul Klee's work and his illness. ... Read more

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Paul Klee, best known for his mastery of color and semi-abstract patchwork paintings of squares, completed more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings during his life. His work is difficult to classify but widely admired and highly sought after. Carl Djerassi, scientist, novelist, philanthropist, most famous for inventing the birth control pill, was a great fan of Klee and amassed one of the most important private collections of his work in the world.

This catalog reproduces highlights from the collection, now owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, including full-color images of nearly one hundred rarely published works. These drawings, sketches, gouache and watercolors reflect the whole of Klee’s short but prolific career and are among his most beautiful and important works. The text includes background and critical commentary from noted Klee experts. In addition, an interview with Djerassi reveals his artistic endeavors and passion for Klee, a creative genius whose energy, versatility, productivity, and vision speak volumes to the scientist and anyone interested in the inventive power of the imagination. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An intimate look at the art of a great artist
This book is the catalogue for a 2002 exhibition ofa private collection exclusively devoted to Paul Klee's works, a collection that was built over 40 years by a Vienna-born Californian collector, Doctor Carl Djerassi, who pledged most of it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The bulk of the collection is formed by a wonderful series of prints, drawings and watercolors, complemented by a few paintings. The book starts with some essays describing how the collection was formed and how the collector's passion was born. The interview of Djerassi is particularly interesting to understand the psyche of a passionate art collector.

The illustrations of some 80 works that follow are good but not outstanding and give a fair idea of Klee's creative power. Do not expect a full retrospective of the artist's career, though; this is not the aim of this book. ... Read more

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A broad selection of representative color reproductions presented with individual analysis and supplemented with a brief biography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An exceptional contribution
This is the catalogue for an exhibition that was held at the Hayward Gallery in London a couple of years ago. It benefits from the exceptional contribution of British artist Bridget Riley, one of this rare brand of artists who do not keep their thoughts on other artists to themselves. Seldom can you get an inside view of a painter's work through another painter's eyes.
The exhibition itself was small, but with some of the best examples of Klee's paintings, coming from all over the world. The illustrations are lavish, colors are well rendered; on the whole, one of the best publications on Klee in English.

Huge Hardback That Captures Klee Exhibit of 1980s
This hardback was issued by the museum when the Klee show toured the USA.It was a spectacular show that captured the essence of this 20th century artistic genius and I was fortunate enough to see the show and buy the book.Paul Klee explored just about every art style there was in his quest to develop modern art and his seemingly simplest paintings were usually his best.Klee lived an often traumatic life as well and when you are exposed to all of his works, you can easily see that quality in his paintings. I found the most eloquent ones were the ones he did as he approached his own painful death. The book does a tour de force job of covering the paintings which were in the show, which is the way the show now lives on.

Careful and thorough introduction to Klee
This is an efficient and careful monograph that succeeds on many levels. Grohmann was Klee's biographer and longtime friend. He is respectful without being sycophantic, and thorough but never plodding. He uses a variety of source materials, including Klee's own writings (diaries and letters).Grohmann establishes Klee's lasting importance to art and to painting by asserting, "It is as though he were still among us, to be consulted on every problem of life and art." Grohmann's generous(40 pages, 58 illustrations) and lively essay on Klee is also charming and personal. It combines biography, criticism, a wealth of references, andthought-provoking appreciation. It's generously illustrated with photographs of Klee and his studio, plus ink, tusche, chalk, and pencil drawings, collage, watercolor, tempera, and oil paintings, a woodcut study, and etchings.

Thetext that accompanies the following forty color plates (a selection of paintings) is the calm, clear art criticism that Grohmann is so good at. The plates' reproduced colors are good but not great.What's best is that Grohmann is such an able teacher. He describes each painting straightforwardly, and then asks intelligent questions, suggests answers that seem well-thought-out, and inspires one to further thought and research. His friendship with Klee gave him some additional understanding of his friend's work and lifelong passions and motives.

A very worthwhile book on a great artist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a wonderful coloring book, too
This slender, inexpensive book is a fine look at Klee's exquisite line (a point out for a walk). If you use it as a coloring books, you'll learn a lot about color, too.

Bob Rixon ... Read more

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Product Description
It is no coincidence that most of the artists at the vanguard of early 20th-century modernist art were poets as well as painters. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was among them. Known today almost exclusively as a visual artist, he was also a poet who experimented across a range of poetic forms. In 1901, while still vacillating between a career as a painter and one as a poet, Klee predicted he would end up expressing himself through the word, "the highest form of art." This first scholarly monograph devoted to Klee's poetry proposes that he lived up to that prediction. It considers poems he identified as such and visual images that are poetic in their compositional techniques, metaphorical imagery, and linear structures. It provides selected examples of Klee's poetry along with English translations that capture the spirit and literal meaning of the German originals. It places the poems and related images within the spectrum of contemporary poetic practice, revealing that Klee matched wits with Christian Morgenstern, rose to the provocations of Kurt Schwitters, and gave new form to the Surrealists' "exquisite corpses." Paul Klee, Poet/Painter is a case study in the reciprocity of poetry and painting in early modernist practice. It introduces a little-known facet of Klee's creative activity and re-evaluates his contributions to a modernist aesthetic. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Klee Universe
WE were fortunate to have obtained a windfall of 9 KLee books:
One of two Rizzoli Klee books.Here is another middle of the road satisfying Klee art book.Rizzoli has published some really good art books and yea this is another good one.

A great cross section of Klee's quasi-logical world.showing a good selection of art works.But no surprizes.Highlighting his color explorations and masterful spacial relationships.

From apprenticeship to professor to art master.A well thoughtout and laidout biography.

pluses(+) :"once emerging from the gray of night"that center grey strip is reproduced in high grade silver ink. nice! But true to real?.. a section titled "keys to interpretation of Klee works"proves interesting and unique.

minuses (-) :standard KLee art reproductions, no wow reproductions.

Please see our other klee reviews.

... Read more

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Klee's art and its relation to music
Klee's work fascinates me because it is so various, doesn't fit in any one movement, and seems to be the product of an unusual mind and an unusual approach to working.Kagan discusses Klee's work as it relates to music. Klee had a great interest in music and used his knowledge of music theory as a tool for developing methods of art making.

The first chapter discusses Klee's ongoing attempts to develop a method of using color in a "polyphonic" manner.Klee had an interest in developing a polyphonic form of art analogous to polyphonic music.An influential text in the development of classical polyphonic music was Johann Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum"; Klee titled the culminating painting in his quest for color polyphony "Ad Parnassum".Kagan also discusses other works, including an interesting discussion of the painting "Alter Klang" and the later "magic square" painting "New Harmony".

The second chapter discusses "operatic paintings": those works where Klee combined line drawings with a color theme background.Klee's line started out delicate in nature and later in his life became more forceful and dominant.

I don't have any knowledge of musical theory but found this book very interesting - someone with music knowledge may find it even more so.The interior illustrations are in black and white, but are useful and relevant to the text.If you aren't very familiar with Klee's work, you might also want a book with good color reproductions to look at while reading this. ... Read more