Paul Klee—Ex Musica Pictura

Abstract

At a recent College Art Association symposium on art and music (New York, 1986), most of the speakers invoked relevant historical admonitions about the dangers of drawing glib comparisons between the two forms of artistic expression. Fortunately, the mind and art of Paul Klee were too precise to invite such facile analogies. Since the publication of Andrew Kagan's seminal Paul Klee/Art and Music in 1983, two major European exhibitions have explored the question of what influence music had on Klee's systematically developed theories about art and the work he produced as those theories evolved. An exhibition on the theme of Klee and music was conceived by Ole Henrik Moe and mounted by the Sonja Henie-Niels Onstad Foundation in Norway during the summer of 1985; the show was subsequently installed as Klee et la musique at the Centre Georges Pompidou, where Klee's works successfully vied for the attention of the crowds that flocked to the newly opened Picasso Museum. In Karin v. Maur's more comprehensive Vom Klang der Bilder, Die Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, organized for Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie from July through September, 1985, Klee was the only artist granted solo status. The handsome catalogues that accompanied both exhibitions contain scholarly essays and a wealth of documentary material, as well as excellent photographs of every work shown.