Thistle- Painting]

DISTEL-BILD , 1924, 73 [THISTLE- PAINTING]

AN ALLEGORY OF LOVE & LEARNING ANN STEPHEN

SUMMARY

The essay proposes a new reading for argues that the painting both gently mocks Distel-bild [Thistle-painting, 1924, 73], one and celebrates Johannes Itten’s role as a of Paul Klee’s Sonderklasse (special class) Bauhaus master and imagines how such of works that has long eluded interpreta- ideas would spread. This new interpretation. Painted at the beginning of Klee’s third tion that aims to unlock the mystery of the year of teaching at the Bauhaus during a painting’s organic and geometric forms, is time of significant change, Distel-bild is no informed by the broader reassessment of ordinary landscape or garden setting as Klee as an intellectual engaged with con- the thistle, that is not a thistle, is a double- temporary ideas and avant-garde move- coded object. Adopting an allegorical mode, ments, rather than as a remote, naïve Klee casts the divisive debates of the early romantic. Bauhaus years in the language of a Hans . Christian Anderson fairy tale. The essay

Distel-bild [Thistle-painting, 1924, 73] in Constructivist design by the newly-arrived the National Gallery of Victoria, the only master László Moholy-Nagy. The appoint- Paul Klee painting held in an Australian art ment of the Hungarian exile marked the museum, has eluded interpretation for al- decisive turn away from Expressionist my- most a century.1 (FIG. 1) The Australian art sticism and towards a more Constructivist historian Margaret Plant, who wrote a mo- orientation at the Bauhaus. nograph on Klee, described it as “a mys- Interest has been sparked in Distel-bild tery picture: the objects around the flower because it bears Klee’s inscription, “S. are indeterminate and involved in a drama – Cl”, the subject of considerable recent known only to their world”.2 New research research.3 This acronym that stands for on the painting, particularly on its Bauhaus Sonderklasse (Special class) was used context, provides the key to unlocking the by the artist to identify those of his works mystery of its organic and geometric forms. he considered to be of the highest qua- Such research is informed by the broader lity and were not to be sold. Klee scholar, reassessment of Klee as an intellectu- Marie Kakinuma who wrote the entry on al engaged with contemporary ideas and the Melbourne Klee in the catalogue of avant-garde movements, rather than as a Sonderklasse works, distinguished it from remote, naïve romantic. his pre-Bauhaus Distel paintings, which Distel-bild was painted in early 1924, at identified the prickly plant as emblematic of the beginning of Klee’s third year of tea- Gothic architecture, “symbolising a thorny ching at the Bauhaus during a time of sig- spiritual ascent”.4 For Distel-bild she sug- nificant change. The following year, after gests a fascinating Bauhausler reading, the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, speculating that the subject might indeed Klee’s teaching notes were published as concern the controversial expulsion of Jo- Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical hannes Itten. In 1919 Walter Gropius had Sketchbook) as the “Bauhausbücher 2”, in a appointed Itten amongst the first Bauhaus

ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 4 / AUTUMN 2017 ARTICLE / PAUL KLEE DISTEL-BILD 41 Fig. 1 Paul Klee masters, to establish the Vorkurs (Prelimi- Eva Forgács argues that Klee’s hiring had Distel-bild, 1924, 73 [Thistle- nary Course), and he became a charismatic been part of Gropius’s policy to “moderate painting] , gouache on canvas on figure at the school. Amongst his regular Itten’s influence”. 7 As she recounts, “even paper on cardboard, 18/16,5 cm x 40,6 cm, National Gallery of exercises was one that involved drawing a Paul Klee, whose usual taciturnity and im- Victoria, Melbourne thistle as an aid to sensitising students in partiality in public affairs earned him the ©National Gallery of Victoria, material studies, as he explained: nickname ‘The Good Lord’, was moved to Melbourne, Inv.Nr. 2999-4 “In front of me there is a thistle. My motor comment trying to moderate the passions, nerves feel a jagged, rapid movement. My from his own ethereal, cosmic viewpoint: ‘I senses, the sense of touch and face, grasp welcome the fact that forces so differently the sharp pointiness of its form, and my orientated are working together in our Bau- mind sees its nature […] It is obvious that haus. I also approve the conflict between I can draw a proper thistle only if the mo- these forces if its effect is evidenced in the vement of my hand, my eyes and my mind final accomplishment. To meet an obstacle correspond exactly to the intense pointed, is a good test of strength for every force – pricking, painful form of a thistle: which provided it is an obstacle of an objective na- means – character of movement equals ture”. 8 Itten finally resigned in March 1923. character of form. This is the main state- Kakinuma suggests that the geometric and ment of our whole research”.5 constructive forms of triangles, cross-like Itten’s teaching that combined sensory awa- bars and a circuit surrounding the plant in reness with spiritualism would assume the Distel-bild might allude to the new Cons- proportions of a cult-like following among tructivist tendencies in the Bauhaus pro- certain Bauhaus students. His messianic gram. Such a reading is consistent with Mazdaznan ideology, an orientalist esoteric Klee’s Seiltänzer, (Tightrope Walker) 1923, mysticism that swept through Germany in that has been interpreted as the artist’s own the early 1920s, was satirised by a cartoon balancing act within an increasingly Const- published in the Bauhaus edition of Theo ructivist-orientated Bauhaus.9 However, van Doesburg (under the pseudonym I.K. geometric forms were not only the domain Bonset)’s Dadaist magazine Mécano sho- of Constructivism. Klee was captivated by wing a bleary-eyed nudist bearing a thistle the abstract designs developed for Bau- confronting De Stijl’s “machine man”.6 (FIG. haus festivals, films and theatre, like those 2) By 1922 Itten was in open conflict with dancing coloured shapes in Ludwig Hirsch- Gropius’s plans for the school that had been feld Mack’s Farbenlicht-Spiel (Colour-light forced, by economic and political pressu- Plays) and Oscar Schlemmer’s Das Tria- res, to become more market-orientated. dische Ballett (Triadic Ballet) with its new

ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 4 / AUTUMN 2017 ARTICLE / PAUL KLEE DISTEL-BILD 42 a square of red dots or “seeds” at its heart. In his lecture notes Klee famously described the process of reading a painting in terms of movement: “The eye must graze over the surface, grazing away and shar- pening one part after the other […] The eye follows the paths established for it in the work”.12 The visual paths of Distel-bild suggest a movement akin to reading as the eye moves along the top of the painted cloth from left to right, observing the frayed, uneven edge of its exaggerated horizontal for- mat while following a narrow path bordered by three linear forms, one straight and two curved. A subdued light leads down a diagonal striped path or paling fence that opens like a gate onto the centre of the painting where a teardrop-shaped mask hovers on a triangular base above a bell-shaped bloom that springs from the glowing oval thistle. Another visual path takes in the dark blue foreground marked on one side by a diagonal cross and on the other, by a small square framed in a crescent at the bottom right- hand corner. A year earlier in the watercolour Seelen Wanderung (Transmigration of a Soul 1923, 133), Klee had made a vertical play between a crescent moon and an earthbound cross; here in Distel-bild both are grounded. The fallen crescent might represent another mystically-inclined mas- Fig. 2 Karl-Peter Röhl, Der Distelseher, vocabulary of geometric forms. If the dark ter, Lothar Schreyer, who left the Bauhaus Mécano No. Blue, 1922 and delicate Distel-bild, made a year after several months after Itten, following the Itten’s departure, is a veiled Bauhaus nar- failure of his play Mondspiel (Moon play) in rative, how do the elements in its abstract 1923.13 landscape contribute to this reading? In Distel-bild all the forms are phantom-li- Klee’s 1923 essay “Wege des Naturstudi- ke, their faintly glowing silhouettes outlined ums” (Ways of Nature Study) advocated that against the thinly washed, cool blue-grey a student’s “growth in the vision and con- ground. Klee used a similar quasi-cubist templation of nature enables him to rise effect of negative definition for several towards a metaphysical view of the world other works at this time, notably kleine and to form free abstract structures which Winterlandschaft mit dem Skiläufer, (small surpass schematic intention and achieve Winter landscape with a Skier, 1924, 85) and a new naturalness, the naturalness of the Ein Dorf als Reliefspiel (A village in play- work”.10 Distel-bild’s metaphysical narra- ful relief, 1925, 140) though Distel-bild is a tive appears to be enacted through a fairy darker, more layered landscape. Through tale about the life cycle of a thistle. The the transparent washes it is possible to see shallow, flattened space is theatrical, and each gesture and painted stroke, from the as Plant has observed, “most of Klee’s figu- faint blue dashes inside the top right cur- rative drawings and paintings and, indeed, ve to the dirty, reddish-brown blobs around many of his nature paintings, have a sense the cross. In the centre, mid-ground whe- of the exposé upon the stage […] presented re the action is concentrated there is a freize-like or frontally, often in a spotlight, shift in temperature with warm pink and as if on a stage”.11 At centre stage of Dis- orange-tinged washes defining contours. tel-bild is an oval that sprouts a geometric Only the crimson red dots at the centre of bloom, surrounded by spiky leaf-forms with the thistle are distinct, held in a rectangle

ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 4 / AUTUMN 2017 ARTICLE / PAUL KLEE DISTEL-BILD 43 surrounded by pale, orange light, and en- When she saw them she smiled, and asked closed in an oval outlined in brown, purple the young heir of the household to pick her and blue, itself surrounded by spiky forms. one of them for her”. 16 These jagged leaf-forms, raised like hands, The plucking of the bloom not only seals the appear as cartoon-like alerts signalling romance, but fuels the aspirations of the trouble, given emphasis by a series of five outsider, beyond the pale, who reflects on swiftly drawn, darker vertical strokes indi- her changing fortunes. cating a fall. The sense of downward mo- “I must be more important than I thought, vement is heightened by the tightly cropped she said to herself. I really belong inside, forms along the top edge which suggests not outside the fence. One gets mispla- that Distel-bild’s extended rectangle ori- ced in the world, but I now have one of my ginally formed the lower part of a larger offspring not only over the fence but actual- painting. ly in a button hole!”17 For an artist fascinated by the literature The idea of being outside the pale is keenly of fairy tales, a crucial clue to unravelling felt through the narrative, as is the tempo- this imaginary landscape lies in a story by rality of life. Seasons pass, love blossoms Hans Christian Anderson, titled “What hap- and the couple are married, yet nothing pened to the Thistle”.14 Like many of Klee’s changes for the increasingly marginalised paintings, Andersen’s thistle tale of love, thistle bush until the newly-weds revisit longing and mortality has a garden setting, her: The young couple, who now were man though mostly the story takes place bey- and wife, came down the garden walk along ond its cultivated borders. Here in the wil- the fence. The bride looked over the fence, derness unruly animal and vegetative life and said, “Why, there still stands the big abound: thistle, but it hasn’t any flower left”. Just outside the fence that separated the “Yes, there’s the ghost of one – the very last garden from a country lane, there grew a one”. Her husband pointed to the silvery very large thistle. It was so unusually big shell of the flower- a flower itself. with such vigorous, full-foliaged branches “Isn’t it lovely! she said. We must have one rising from the root that it well deserved just like that carved around the frame of to be called a thistle bush. No one paid our picture”.18 any attention to her except one old donkey Life, however, remains the same for the that pulled the dairymaid’s cart. He would thistle-bush beyond the garden, and she stretch his old neck toward the thistle and is led to consider her fate, in the bad-lands say, “You’re a beauty. I’d like to eat you!”15 of the wilderness as winter approaches: But his tether was not long enough to let “What strange things can happen to one, him reach the thistle and eat her. said the thistle. My oldest child was put in In the painting, a diagonal cross in the dark a buttonhole, and my youngest in a picture foreground is placed on one side of the frame. I wonder where I shall go”.19 thistle, marking it out as wasteland, whi- The old donkey by the roadside looked long le along the top edge runs a line of fence, and lovingly at the thistle. “Come to me, a gate and two curved borders suggesting my sweetie, he said. I cannot come to you the outlines of cultivated garden-beds. The because my tether is not long enough”.20 transformative event of Anderson’s tale But the thistle did not answer. takes place when the thistle captures the Klee’s painting appears to summon up the attention of one of the guests attending a epiphany at the end of the fairy-tale. His mu- garden party: ted tones resist any dramatic point of colour “The young people amused themselves or tonal contrast in favour of a subdued and on the lawn, where they played croquet. wintery northern twilight. In that light, the As they strolled about in the garden, each last silvery shell of the thistle sprouts like young lady plucked a flower and put it in a a ghostly bell. A sunbeam, in the form of a young man’s buttonhole. The young lady pink, glowing tear-drop mask, appears like from Scotland looked all around her for a an apparition, its triangular beam echoing flower. But none of them suited her until the thistle’s last bloom. Light, the source she happened to look over the fence and of life throughout the year, now responds saw the big, flourishing thistle bush, full to the musings of the old mother thistle of deep purple, healthy-looking flowers. who is finally resigned to her fate as winter

ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 4 / AUTUMN 2017 ARTICLE / PAUL KLEE DISTEL-BILD 44 approaches: of painting. In fusing the fairy tale with that “When one’s children are safe inside, a mo- of the Mazdaznan’s fate, the artist reimagi- ther may be content to stand outside the nes the expulsion from the “garden“ of the fence”. Bauhaus in order to redeem the outsider “That’s a most honourable thought, said the for posterity, in some kind of cosmic recon- sunbeam. You too shall have a good place”. ciliation of conflict. “In a flowerpot or in a frame?” the thistle The painting’s “special class” confirms asked. the importance of the Melbourne Klee for “In a fairy tale,” said the sunbeam. And the artist. Indeed, Klee expert Charles W. here it is.21 Haxthausen has identified another relati- In Anderson’s tale, the outsider is redee- vely small but significant group in his oeu- med from oblivion through art, drawing vre, including any painting bearing the title attention back to the act of storytelling. bild (picture), as it “becomes an image of an Even though no fairy-tale book by Hans image […] a kind of meta-picture […] they Christian Andersen can be found in Paul are parodies of traditional pictorial gen- Klee's library, dispersed after his sacking res or visual artefacts”.25 Parody, as Haxt- from Dusseldorf as a “degenerate artist” hausen explains, was the central focus of in 1934, Andersen’s stories were an integ- Clement Greenberg’s 1950 essay on Klee. ral part of any German middle-class child- Greenberg observed that the artist’s irony hood. Indeed in the mid-19th century, as was “never bitter […] when he has rendered the literary historian Cay Dollop explains, it harmless by negation, he takes it fondly “in both Denmark and Germany the fairy back”.26 Distel-bild is no ordinary landscape tale was born because tales from the other or garden setting as the thistle, that is not a country were translated. In each country thistle, is a double-coded object. The pain- they called the attention of readers (clear- ting both mocks and celebrates the sharp ly, grownups in need of reading material pointiness of Itten’s role in the Bauhaus and for children) to this new genre”.22 The art imagines how such ideas would spread. historian Annie Bourneuf, in her recent stu- The recent identification of the painting’s si- dy on the artist, has described how Klee’s gnificance for Klee makes its reclusive sub- instincts are redemptive, as he seeks out ject all the more intriguing. Kakinuma no- abandoned archaic forms and “takes up tes it was exhibited three times in Germany, negative terms from writing about art with the year it was painted and then was sent which he was familiar – the hieroglyph, the to Galerie Vavin-Raspail as one of “39 aqua- schema, the fairy tale – as positive models relles de Paul Klee”, part of his first solo allowing him to conceptualize hybrids of exhibition in Paris in October 1925. In 1949 writing and picturing”.23 Klee's interest in the Klee Society, founded after the death fairy tales was intimately associated with of the artist’s widow, released works from the childhood of his son Felix for whom he the “special class” and it was sold from the made some 50 dolls and puppets between Klee estate by Galerie Rosengart in Lucer- 1916 and 1924. It was also at this time that ne to a Chicago collector, Charlotte Picher Klee included Distel-bild in an exhibition he Purcell, who several years later consigned held with the Austrian artist, Alfred Kubin, the work to a London dealer where it was who had illustrated a collection of fairy ta- acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. les by Hans Christian Andersen published Such a peripatetic existence ensured a long by Bruno Cassirer in 1922.24 exile for the Distel-bild before its narrative Klee’s small painting adopts the scale of could be seen. this minor literature of childhood, however any explicit reference to Andersen’s tale or 1 Distel-bild, 1924, 73 gouache and watercolour on linen, laid down on thin card with traces of ruled Itten’s fate is well concealed, as it is no illus- ink and pencil, 21 x 40.6 cm (image) 38.1 x 54.3 cm tration but enacts the moment of revelation (card), Paul Klee Stiftung, Catalogue Raisonné No. in abstract terms. The allegory, inscribed in 3441, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). The painting a plant’s cycle of life and death, reveals how was exhibited in 1925 at the Paris-based Galerie Vavin-Raspail of Max Berger. See Baumgartner u. a, the outcast has the possibility of attaining pp. 8–39. In 1953 the painting was purchased by the immortality in art, like Klee’s own act of Trustees of the NGV from Reide and Lefevre Ltd, retrieving the offcut with its frayed, uneven London. 2 See Plant 1968, p 127. edges and transforming it through the act

ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 4 / AUTUMN 2017 ARTICLE / PAUL KLEE DISTEL-BILD 45 3 See Kersten/Okuda/Kakinuma 2015. The Andersen/Kubin 1922 catalogue combines a relatively small group of less Hans Christian Andersen and Alfred Kubin, Die than 300 works of the Sonderklasse (Special class), Nachtigall ; Die kleine Seejungfrau ; Der Reisekamerad, a ranking Klee used between the years 1925 and Berlin: Cassirer, 1922, Vol. 11. 1933 for his production between 1901 and 1933, in an Baumgartner 2016 oeuvre of nearly nine thousand works. Michael Baumgartner u. a, “Paul Klee und die Sur- 4 See Kersten/Okuda/Kakinuma/Frey 2015, p. realisten. ‚In Weimar blüht eine Pflanze, die einem 128. The four pre-Bauhaus thistle paintings are Hexenzahn gleicht’. (Louis Aragon)”, in Paul Klee und Distelgarten (Thistle Garden) 1918, 30, Arkansas Arts die Surrealisten, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz-Verlag, 2016. Center, Distelblüte (Thistle Bloom) 1918, 86, location Bourneuf 2016 unknown, Stillleben mit d. Distelblüte (Still Life with Annie Bourneuf, Paul Klee The Visible and the Legible, Thistle Bloom) 1919, 104, location unknown, and Das Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Haus zur Distelblüte (The Thistle Flower House) 1919, Dollerup 1995 175, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Cay Dollerup, “Translation as a Creative Force in 5 See Itten 1978, p. 220. Also see student work literature: the birth of the European Bourgeois Fairy from Itten’s course, Joost Schmidt, Thistles, 1920, Tale”, in: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 90, No. 1, charcoal drawing, in Wingler 1978, pp. 281, 283. Jan. 1995. 6 The cartoon by Bauhaus student Karl-Peter Röhl Forgács 1995 appeared in the Bauhaus edition of Mécano, No. Blue, Ēva Forgács, The Bauhaus idea and Bauhaus politics, 1922. See also Christoph Wagner u. a., Das Bauhaus Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995. und die Esoterik: Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Haxthausen 2016 Paul Klee, Leipzig: Kerber, 2005. Charles W. Haxthausen, “Klee’s Parodic Genres”, in: 7 See Forgács 1995, pp. 71–2. Paul Klee. Irony at work, ed. Angela Lampe, Prestel: 8 See Forgács 1995, pp. 63–64. Centre Pompidou, 2016. 9 This convincing interpretation by Cathrin Itten 1978 Klinsöhr-Leroy is made through close reference to Johannes Itten, “Analysen alter Meister”, 1921, in Klee’s own lectures. See Klinsöhr-Leroy 2016, pp. Johannes Itten. Werke und Schriften, ed. Rotzler, Zu- 126–130. rich: DuMont, 1978. 10 See Klee 1923, p. 17. Kersten/Okuda/Kakinuma/Frey 2015 11 See Plant 1978, p.10. Wolfgang Kersten, Osamu Okuda and Marie Kaki- 12 See Klee 1925, p. 33. numa, Stefan Frey (Mitwirkende), Paul Klee: Sonder- 13 See Weber 2009, p. 78. klasse. Unverkäuflich (Special class Unsaleable), ed. 14 See Andersen 1869. Hans Christian Anderson, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Museum der bildenden “Hvad tidselen oplevede” (“What happened to the Künste Leipzig, 2015. Thistle”) 1869, translated by Jean Hersolt, H.C. Klee 1923 Anderson Centre website, (andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/ Paul Klee, “Wege des Naturstudiums” (Ways of Na- register/index_e.html) cited 20/04/2017. ture Study), Staatlisches Bauhaus Weimar, 1919–1923, 15 See Andersen 1869 Munich 1923, reprinted in Paul Klee Creative Confes- 16 See Andersen 1869 sion and other writings, London: Tate Publishing, 2013. 17 See Andersen 1869 Klee 1925 18 See Andersen 1869 Paul Klee, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical 19 See Andersen 1869 Sketchbook), Bauhausbücher 2, Munich 1925, reprin- 20 See Andersen 1869 ted London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1968. 21 See Andersen 1869 Klinsöhr-Leroy 2016 22 Dollerup concludes his study of the two-way Cathrin Klinsöhr-Leroy, “In Equilibrium. Paul Klee translation between the tales of the German Grimm at the Bauhaus”, Paul Klee. Irony at work, ed. Angela brothers and the Danish Hans Christian Anderson, Lampe, Centre Pompidou, Prestel, 2016, pp. 126-130. writing: “The emergence of the literary fairy-tale Plant 1968 genre is an early (perhaps even the earliest) situation Margaret Plant, “The Modern European Collection”, in which translations create, influence, and promote in National Gallery of Victoria: Painting Drawing Sculp- national literary output, for the simple reason that ture, ed. Ursula Hoff, F.W. Melbourne: Cheshire Pub- the genre was considered primarily as literature lishing Pty Ltd, 1968. for children, who would be unfamiliar with foreign Plant 1978 languages”. See Dollerup 1995, pp. 101, 102. Margaret Plant, Paul Klee Figures and Faces, London: 23 See Bourneuf 2016, p.10. Thames & Hudson, 1978. 24 Andersen/Kubin 1922. I am grateful to Walther Weber 2009 J. Fuchs and Osamu Okuda for his many helpful Klaus Weber, “Lothar Schreyer, Death House for a suggestions including drawing my attention to woman, c. 1920”, in: Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops the exhibition ”Zwei Künstlerphantasten. Paul for Modernity, eds Barry Bergdoll, Leah Dickerman, Klee und Alfred Kubin, Kunsthalle Mannheim, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009. 23.11.1924-10.1.1925. Wingler 1978 25 See Haxthausen 2016, pp. 159–160. Hans Wingler, The Bauhaus. Weimar Dessau Berlin 26 Haxthausen 2016 quoting Greenberg, p. 160. Chicago, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press, 1978. Bibliography Andersen 1869 Hans Christian Andersen, “Hvad tidselen oplevede” (What happened to the Thistle) 1869, translated by Jean Hersolt, H.C. Anderson Centre website, (andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/register/index_e.html), cited 20 April 2017.

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