Beard of the Week XXX: Bauhaus Style

Let's get the year of beards started with a bit of style–Bauhaus style, to be specific.

This week's beard belongs to Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). The upper photo shows Klee as most of the world might have seen him; the lower image is Paul Klee as seen by Paul Klee. He taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931. I enjoyed this short biography from the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the short Wikipedia entry.

I was reminded of Klee–and his beard–when I tripped over this Artcyclopedia page for Klee and spent some time looking through the links to his works in various museums and public galleries.

I'm not sure why I'm such a fan of Klee's work, but seeing it always excites me. His paintings nearly always seems fresh and creative to me, although to describe them in words would make them sound silly or trivial. Mostly his paintings are small, but their significance is large. I've read different people try to use one of the standard artsy terms to describe him–"expressionist", "surrealist", "cubist" even–but I think he's really an artistic movement by himself.

Perhaps he appeals to me because he was very sensitive to color and seems, to my taste, to know what to do with it. Some of his best work is virtually nothing but organized color. (Here are four examples: one, two, three, four.) But he's no mere color-field painter; Klee's colors jump and jostle and rush to tell interesting and exciting stories.

My keen interest in Klee may have started in my youth. Sometime when I was in secondary school I went on a field trip to hear a concert played by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. On the program was a relatively new piece of music: "Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee", by Gunther Schuller. The work was a collection of short character pieces inspired by paintings by Klee.

One of Schuller's Studies was called "The Twittering Machine", based on the painting by Klee of the same name. (Here's an image of "The Twittering Machine".) At the time I knew nothing of Paul Klee, and had never heard of this painting, but I was beguiled by the title. The music was cute enough, but it was the title that really captured my imagination.

I like the painting, yes, but I think I may like the title better. Regardless, I suspect that this might have been the moment when the seed of my fascination with Paul Klee was sown.

Posted on January 20, 2008 at 00.05 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art

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  1. Written by Melanie
    on Thursday, 31 January 2008 at 22.12
    Permalink

    Hurrah for the return of the Beards!

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