The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914-1920

The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914-1920
Author: Otto Karl Werckmeister
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1989-07-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780226893587

Paul Klee—one of the preeminent artists of the twentieth century—was associated with all of the major movements of the first half of the century: expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and abstraction. In this economic and political history, O. K. Werckmeister traces Klee's career as a professional artist, concentrating on the years 1914-20 in which Klee rose from obscurity to recognition in the visual culture of the incipient Weimar Republic. Werckmeister reveals the degree to which Klee, who has been traditionally portrayed as aloof from politics and the vicissitudes of the art market, was subject to and interacted with material conditions. Drawing on rich documentary evidence—records of Klee's sales, reviews of his exhibitions, the artist's published writings about his art, unpublished correspondence, as well as contemporary criticism—Werckmeister follows Klee's transformation from an idiosyncratic abstract individualist to a metaphysical storyteller to mystical sage. Werckmeister argues that this latter image was promoted by a number of influential art critics and dealers acting in cooperation with the artist himself. This posture prompted Klee's success first in the war-weary modernist art world of 1916-18 and then in the pseudo-revolutionary art world of 1919-20. This work is a critical challenge to the myth of Klee's art and to the hagiography of his artistic personality. Werckmeister's historical account is sure to be a controversial yet significant contribution to Klee studies—one that will change the nature of Klee scholarship for some time to come.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee
Author: Michael Baumgartner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Exhibitions
ISBN: 9780500239155

A new retrospective survey that reveals the complexities of this popular artist best known for his playful and colorful aesthetic

Behind the Angel of History

Behind the Angel of History
Author: Annie Bourneuf
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2022-10-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226816710

The story of artist R. H. Quaytman’s discovery of an engraving hidden behind a famous artwork by Paul Klee. This book begins with artist R. H. Quaytman uncovering something startling about a picture by Paul Klee. Pasted beneath Klee’s 1920 Angelus Novus—famous for its role in the writings of its first owner, Walter Benjamin—Quaytman found that Klee had interleaved a nineteenth-century engraving of Martin Luther, leaving just enough visible to provoke questions. Behind the Angel of History reveals why this hidden face matters, delving into the intertwined artistic, political, and theological issues consuming Germany in the wake of the Great War. With the Angelus Novus, Klee responded to a growing call for a new religious art. For Benjamin, Klee’s Angelus became bound up with the prospect of meaningful dialogue among religions in Germany. Reflecting on Klee’s, Benjamin’s, and Quaytman’s strategies of superimposing conflicting images, Annie Bourneuf reveals new dimensions of complexity in this iconic work and the writing it inspired.

Discovering Child Art

Discovering Child Art
Author: Jonathan David Fineberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2001-01-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780691086828

This book brings together thirteen distinguished critics and scholars to explore children's art and its profound but rarely documented influence on the evolution of modern art. It shows that children's art and childhood have inspired major works of art, served as central metaphors for artistic spontaneity and honesty, and provided a window into the fundamental human qualities explored by modern artists. The volume complements editor Jonathan Fineberg's groundbreaking new book, The Innocent Eye (Princeton, 1997), in which he showed how many of the greatest masters of modern art collected and were directly influenced by children's drawings. Contributors here both expand on Fineberg's themes and take the study of children's art in new directions. They examine, for example, the influence of child art on such artists as Kandinsky, Klee, Larionov, and Miró; the diverse styles of children's art; the influence of Romantic ideas on perceptions of children's art; the conception of giftedness versus education in children's drawings; and the relationship between children's art and primitivism. The book offers unique glimpses into the working processes of great modern artists, presenting, for example, Dora Vallier's personal recollections of Miró and his creative process, and new documentation about the works of the Russian avant-garde. The essays draw on art theory, psychology, and the close study of individual works of art and written texts. Discovering Child Art will appeal to a wide range of readers, including art historians, psychologists, and art educators. Contributors to the book are Troels Andersen, Rudolf Arnheim, John Carlin, Marcel Franciscono, Ernst Gombrich, Christopher Green, Josef Helfenstein, Werner Hofmann, Yuri Molok, G. G. Pospelov, Richard Shiff, Dora Vallier, and Barbara Würwag.

The Biography Book

The Biography Book
Author: Daniel S. Burt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 636
Release: 2001-02-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313017263

From Marilyn to Mussolini, people captivate people. A&E's Biography, best-selling autobiographies, and biographical novels testify to the popularity of the genre. But where does one begin? Collected here are descriptions and evaluations of over 10,000 biographical works, including books of fact and fiction, biographies for young readers, and documentaries and movies, all based on the lives of over 500 historical figures from scientists and writers, to political and military leaders, to artists and musicians. Each entry includes a brief profile, autobiographical and primary sources, and recommended works. Short reviews describe the pertinent biographical works and offer insight into the qualities and special features of each title, helping readers to find the best biographical material available on hundreds of fascinating individuals.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee
Author: Christine Hopfengart
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3775747192

Paul Klee (1879–1940) ist einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter der modernen Kunst. Er schuf ein ebenso universales wie individuelles Werk, das zwischen allen Strömungen und Ismen seiner Zeit steht. Sein gewaltiges malerisches, zeichnerisches und bildnerisches Œuvre, seine Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und nicht zuletzt seine pädagogischen Notizen bilden den Hintergrund für diese pointierte Darstellung zu Leben und Werk des meditativen Künstlers und visuellen Denkers. Der reich bebilderte Band zeichnet Klees bewegte Biografie nach und spannt den Bogen von Klees künstlerischen Anfängen mit karikaturistischen Zeichnungen und Akten über seine Begegnung mit der Avantgarde und die berühmten Aquarelle der Tunisreise oder die abstrakten Farbkompositionen der Bauhaus-Zeit bis zu den geheimnisvollen Bildfindungen seiner letzten Jahre in Bern.

German Expressionism

German Expressionism
Author: Rose-Carol Washton Long
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 1995-12-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520202643

"An indispensable anthology that immediately renders its predecessors obsolete. With its gathering of public and private documents, it carries us through the rise and fall of one of the great upheavals of modern art."—Robert Rosenblum, New York University "These essays, including many previously unavailable in English, are rich with startling new insights into the German Expressionist psyche. Elucidating the artists' view of government, the role of women in modern society, and their own ambivalence about the effectiveness of abstract art, this anthology is essential reading for all scholars and students of twentieth-century art."—Joan Marter, author of Alexander Calder

The Culture of the Case

The Culture of the Case
Author: Frederic J. Schwartz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2023-06-13
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262047705

How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed. In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time. As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.