Word: klee
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...Klee on the Side...
...interested in TIME'S suggested interpretation of Paul Klee's High Water-Wood [Sept. 17]. Modern art can mean different things to different people. Tip the picture to the left and you can see Woman eternally holding Man in her fingers. Judging from their expressions, neither one is too happy about this situation...
...Danger. The one quality Klee would not tolerate was vagueness. He contrived an elaborate visual lexicon in which he "explained" his favorite devices (dots, lines, arrows, planes) and assigned to each a meaning according to its direction or placement. But, as in Fire Wind (opposite), little more than the title is actually necessary to decipher a Klee painting. The red arrows indicate motion, in this case of wind feeding the fire, while the green arrows struggle to hem the flames in against the background darkness. She Howls, We Play uses lines that are a cross between wire sculpture and children...
High Water-Wood, in the Hulton col lection, belongs to Klee's final works. It was painted in 1938, after Nazi interference had driven him back to Bern. Klee was dying of a rare disease which produced progressive drying of his body tis sues, and he knew it. Painted on newspaper with thick paint and broad strokes, High Water-Wood is one of the most private of Klee's works. Areas of green, yellow and blue are laid out with perfect harmony...
Over them float squiggling black lines that might be found on a microscope slide. Perhaps Klee meant to indicate his awareness of a hostile, alien substance heralding the beginning of disintegration. Two years later, on June 29, 1940, Klee died of his wasting disease...