It has been a long time since I looked, really looked, at the works of Paul Klee. In light of the dire predictions about our imminent demise as a species, I felt impelled to revisit his wit and whimsy, searching for some lighter view on who we are. Lest you think that Klee's take on life has become outmoded, consider these words that he wrote in 1920: "Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more latent realities". Take a look at this month's "Long Live the Crankies". Klee could well be a contemporary of myself and other current thinkers.

The forward to this volume begins with a Klee quote that today's artists will understand (unless they immobilize sharks in tanks): "No people (of this world) supports us". At the time, Klee's discouragement was palpable. Little did he know that his intimate visual language would spread far beyond his years and reach people he had never heard of.

Klee's output was prodigious - it was estimated that he produced over 10,000 pieces. At one class that he was teaching, he announced to the students: "I have shown you one way here - I took a different one myself". He knew finally that he had succeeded when he was invited to teach in Weimar, Germany, at a school that Walter Gropius had recently established. This position not only guaranteed him a steady income, but brought him into close contact with some of the leading artists of the day, people like Lionel Feininger and Johannes Itten. At the same time that he was being labeled "a degenerate artist" in Nazi Germany, his work was beginning to attract notice in France and the United States.

Robert Hughes has written of Klee: "Like Kandinsky, Klee valued the 'primitive', and especially the art of children. He envied their polymorphous freedom to create signs, and respected their innocence and directness". But the very joy and playfulness that characterize the best of Klee's work ironically kept him from being taken seriously at first. In the end, one simply has to give rein to the eye and the mind and let them play with Klee's lyrical and expressive forms. Klee's best pieces take a delight in visual dance and rhythm. They create a unique vocabulary that indeed touches the freshness of a child's view of life. Klee's own words are somewhat prophetic: "I cannot be understood in this world".

c. Corinne Whitaker 2010

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