Excerpts from the book “Poetry of Travel”

Visual artists have always traveled because for people who create art, it is essential to unlock new sources of inspiration. In Paul Klee’s artistic career, traveling played an especially large part. Time and again, he went to Italy, France and Switzerland. Both his trips to Tunisia and Egypt had a major impact on his work. On his quest to overcome the limitations of sensual experience and explore the secrets of nature, he encountered progressive European painters’ movements and eventually found his own style, which brought him world success.

In this spirit, 55 artists from 27 countries have come together at the occasion of Paul Klee’s 145th birthday to showcase their own travel experiences. What impact has traveling had on their artistic work? In how far have their journeys as such become artistic motifs? The editor of this book has divided the artworks from around the world into chapters and added selected haiku poems, exquisite quotes, descriptive statements, and illustrations. The result is a multifaceted homage from the adventurous perspective of the traveling eye.

In Memory of Paul Klee

The text and the poems in this post are excerpts from the book “Poetry of Travel“.

Introduction

The wandering artist is the epitome of the eternal seeker. Deceleration, recreation and relaxation liberate the spirit and free up headspace for new ideas. Curious and eager to learn, the traveler taps into something resembling a meditative state of mind, unlocking unexpected answers and impulses. New places provide new motifs and fresh creative impulses. The way artists evaluate the success of their trips is often based on aesthetic parameters. Exploring the unknown helps them gain a better understanding of the world and find their place in it. Many use traveling to educate themselves in a cultural sense, develop and polish their artistic skills. The difference and the distance to everyday life open up new dimensions of perception. The result is often a faster working pace and a new stylistic focus. On the move, artists often meet and engage in an exchange with likeminded people, deriving new artistic input from their encounters. Immaterial treasures of this kind may be supplemented by valuable business connections. Finally, as the number of kilometers and international connections rises, so does the artist’s reputation. Many process their travel experiences in later works after their return. Today, as the user surfaces of the world wide web have become the most popular place to travel, the sensuality and physical experience of real-world travel has become more important than ever to keep artistic experience rooted in reality.

Kairouan and the Path to Artistic Defamiliarization

When I think of Paul Klee (1879-1940), the first thing I remember is a small painting in a prominent international exhibit at Bonner Kunsthalle. Even though I wasn’t sure how to interpret it, from its small corner, it seemed to be emitting a magical glow and kept pulling me back in. Those who wish to delve into the mysterious world of Klee’s work and gain a deeper understanding of it should take a closer look at the time into which he was born. Around 1900, the avant-garde “secessions” formed in Munich, Berlin and Vienna, later joined by the expressionist artist groups “The Blue Rider” and “The Bridge”. Back then, art soared to the brave new heights of modernity, but outside a small circle, it was met with widespread incomprehension.

While Paul Klee knew he was unique as an artist, due to the political environment in Germany at the time, he suffered a dramatic fate. His inevitable emigration in 1933 had left him deeply devastated. Alongside his friend and colleague Kandinsky he had worked at the famous Bauhaus and the Academy in Dusseldorf for many years. The condemnation of the entire modern art scene in their country was unbearable and humiliating to German intellectuals. After World War II, however, the rejected artists attracted all the more international attention.

Today, Paul Klee, next to Picasso, is known as one of the most important and influential modern artists. Even after World War I, few people understood that the avant-garde artists were making a significant new statement. Paul Klee was lucky in so far as his parents saw and fostered his talents, as a child he learned to play the violin and was encouraged to visit the theater and study world literature and classical music. After growing up in Switzerland as the son of a Swiss singer and a German music teacher, he went to Munich aged 19. In 1900, he was admitted to the Academy.

Then came the war, the November Revolution, and the Collapse of the German Empire, finally the transition to a parliamentary democracy. The overall sense of confusion resulting from these political experiences and the global economic crisis gave rise to a new type of art, which may be thought of as expressing the global historical nihilism of the postwar years. Especially the Dadaism developed by Hans Arp and his circle provokingly broke with the past. The invention of photography and film had led to a break with old seeing habits. The new objective was to look behind what was visible. Baudelaire’s poetry in the mid 19th century had foreshadowed this change. Paul Klee and Rainer Maria Rilke had a lively exchange in Munich. The philosophical dialogue between objects in Klee’s work was also influenced by poetry.

Artists’ search for roots outside their familiar terrain also included the hope of finding a better world elsewhere. Technological developments had unlocked new travel destinations. Traveling has always brought about turning points in artists’ careers. Both art and traveling are based on longing. This is what enables artists to continue making new discoveries long after their return. One of the most famous artists’ journeys led Klee and his painter friends August Macke and Louis Moilliet to Tunisia in the spring of 1914. The intensely brightening sun, the abundance of colors, as well as the ornamental and calligraphic shapes he encountered on his trip to Tunis greatly inspired the color melody and dissolution of traditional three-dimensionality in his work.

The formulaic hieroglyphs and the flow of oriental writing he came across on his trip to Egypt in 1928/1929 became a major influence on his later work. Painting pyramid shapes, he had started dreaming of Egypt years ago. Art critics talked about his “marked affinity with the Orient”. In this context, his stripe paintings like “Highway and Byways” at Ludwig Museum in Cologne are especially well known. Fifteen years earlier, the German impressionist Max Slevogt had made an elaborate trip to Egypt to paint an entire cycle. Klee, on the other hand, reflected on and transformed what he had seen at the studio after he got back. Trying to turn poems into paintings and produce several layers of meaning, he was bent on reducing objects to their essence. This helped him create his own visual universe of poetry and music. By dissolving shapes, he invented a unique sign language that could be read in countless new ways – like a poem that comes alive not only based on its words taken at face value, but also on their sound, their rhythm, and the distinct nature of the cosmos they form between object and abstraction.

According to Feuerbach, to understand a painting, a chair is needed, and the integration of the dimension of “time”. Due to defamiliarization, form and meaning emerge from a texture of visual elements and signs. A famous reference work in this context is Wilhelm Hausenstein’s book “Kairuan” about Paul Klee from 1921. In it, Hausenstein explains the terms of “deformation” and “defamiliarization” in avant-garde art based on his new understanding of art politics. At the time, the desert town of Kairouan was a symbol of distance and defamiliarization, but also a source of new design ideas. The trailblazing synthesis of urban development and architectural image composition was realized at the Bauhaus. The cubist shape of African houses and the domed mosque are recurring motifs throughout Klee’s oevre.

Painted to create an illusion of depth, his works are based on an enchanting rhythm of shapes and a colorful melody. As early as his seven months trip to Italy he had arrived at a poetic style. The fish and the bizarre shapes of nature in magical color shades inspired by the aquarium of Naples keep showing up in his paintings. Visiting Robert Delaunay in Paris in 1912, whose essay about light he translated into German, gave him an intense creative push. His first encounter with the paintings of the cubists and with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler who would later become his gallerist, also contributed to making Paris a milestone on Klee’s artistic path.

Worlds of Shapes

The blue door in the
white alley dissolves into
the stairs of the night.

On the chalky white
Facades, the silhouettes of
Feather palms dancing.

Fairies left behind
These white cubes of the village
Mirrored in the sea..

In the black of night
Lonely alleys flooded with
Fluorescent moonlight.

Sources: Please see the authors, poet and bibliography in the above link to the online book (imprint at the end of the book)!