THE HUMOROUS COSMOS OF PAUL KLEE AND ITS TEMPORAL ORDERS

Abstract

Paul Klee’s artistic legacy has prompted studies that range from art history and aesthetics to philosophy, and they have now matured to the point that they require the construction of a consistent methodology. Klee’s ample talents were expressed not only in his artworks but also in his polemical and theoretical writings and in the mastery of language he exhibited in his renowned Diaries; this makes the question of unity extremely important. What holds Klee’s oeuvre of different forms and genres together, and what lies at the center of his understanding of the world and of art’s role in it? The author argues that the three major aspects of Klee’s approach to art are united by humor of a kind much like the Romantic era’s humor as it was explained by Jean Paul (literary pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763-1825) in his Vorschule der Aesthetik (Preschool of Aesthetics). The article then explores how humor functions as a creative principle in Klee’s art. From the artist’s placing himself between different orders of being, it follows that humor becomes a generator of creativity. In Klee’s works that placement falls between an optical and a metaphysical contact with the object (see Klee’s Ways to Study Nature). These two orders diverge primarily in their temporal aspect: The artist is suspended between flowing time and the fullness of time, or eternity. The principles Klee follows to arrange the interplay between these temporal orders in his paintings are examined. He uses the simultaneous rhythm from fields of colors and a freely drawn line that creates and organizes space. Humor as a creative and artistic principle mediates the inevitable conflict between the boundless demiurgic role assumed by the artist and the unavoidable limitations on creativity. © 2021, Gaidar Institute Press. All rights reserved.