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An Approach to Klee and Japan Jenny Anger

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An Approach to Klee and Japan Jenny Anger MEETING ON A BRIDGE: AN APPROACH TO KLEE AND JAPAN JENNY ANGER SUMMARY Ein japanischer Kunstsammler reiste zum Okuda hat hierzu folgende These aufgestellt: Schosshaldenfriedhof in Bern, wo Paul Klee »Inmitten eines rasant voranschreitenden begraben ist. Der Sammler brachte etwas Modernisierungsprozesses hat Japan seine mit: Eine mit grosser Sorgfalt geschriebene traditionellen ästhetischen Werte in der Kalligrafie des buddhistischen Herz Sutra Kunst von Klee wieder erkannt, zu der es zu - (jap. Hannya shingy ). Er wollte es dort mit rückgegriffen hat, um seine kulturelle Iden - Klee in dieser und dōer jenseitigen Welt ver - tität zu bewahren.« Das Essay ist Bestandteil eint sehen. Heimlich begrub er den geliebten eines grösseren Projekts, welches der Frage Text direkt neben Klees Grab. Diese Anekdote nachgeht, weshalb viele Japaner glauben, in zeigt die aussergewöhnliche Leidenschaft, Klees Kunst ihre eigene Ästhetik wieder zu die viele Japaner für Klee und seine Kunst erkennen. empfinden. Der Kunsthistoriker Osamu Japanese art collector traveled to at once. »Form does not differ from empti - Schosshalden, near Bern, Switzer - ness, emptiness does not differ from form,« Aland, where Paul Klee is buried. The the sutra maintains. There are »no ignorance collector brought something with him: he had and also no extinction of it, and so forth until hand written the Buddhist Heart Sutra (Hanya no old age and death and also no extinction Shinkyo) with great care. He wanted it there of them.« Opposites are both held and dis - with Klee in this world and the next: he se - solved; life both is and is not of this time, of cretly buried the beloved text right next to this earth. The sutra speaks of immanence, Klee’s grave. 1 This anecdote demonstrates transcendence, and ultimate contingency. the extraordinary passion that many Japan - The collector may have been inspired by ese feel for Klee and his art. 2 As Osamu Klee’s art, his gravestone, or both. Carved Okuda has theorized, »In the midst of a rap - into Klee’s headstone are his words: »In this idly progressing modernization process, world I cannot be understood. For I live as Japan recognized its traditional aesthetic val - much with the dead as with the unborn. A lit - ues again in the Klee’s art, to which it tle closer to the heart of creation than usual, reached back, in order to preserve its cultural and for a long time still not close enough.« identity.« 3 Precisely what in Klee’s art allows There are expansion and collapse of time and many Japanese to see their own aesthetics space in these words. At the memorial, it is remains to be articulated, and this essay rep - as if Klee were speaking from beyond the resents a contribution to that larger project. grave, from a place where mortals cannot The tale of the buried Heart Sutra conveys reach him, and magically close to the origin something of the nature of the deeply empa - of all. Scholars know, however, that Klee thetic response that is our subject. The Heart wrote the words in 1920, twenty years before Sutra is about wholeness and emptiness all his death, specifically for publication, where ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE NO. 5 / SPRING 2018 ANGER / KLEE AND JAPAN 104 Fig. 1 Harue Koga Copy of P. Klee's "Kairuan"(1914) , The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo © MOMAT/DNPartcom Fig. 2 Paul Klee Kairuan , 1914,38, from reproduction in Leopold Zahn, Paul Klee: Leben / Werk / Geist , 1920 the lines are dubiously attributed to his diary. 4 Tunisia in 1914—a decidedly more Islamic lo - At the time, the words were part of the artist’s cale (at least Hausenstein notes that the self-fashioning, a projection for the public of Buddha was thousands of miles away!). 8 how he felt he was or how he wanted to be However, even though Klee’s experience with perceived; »for a long time still not close Taoism and Buddhism was limited, there enough« may even reveal frustration with the seems to be something authentic about the difficulty in transcending his immanent experience of Klee’s art that these references world. Reading the text at the gravesite, visi - convey. 9 In any case, the allusion to Eastern tors sense both the absence of that once religion did not ring false for Nakata mortal, fallible man and the presence of his Sadanosuke, a remarkably early Japanese great spirit, uncannily speaking to us from collector of Klee who published a Japanese then, there, here, and now. translation of Wedderkop’s text already in These lines by Klee have been associated 1924. 10 And painter Koga Harue, a devout with Eastern religion since their appearance Buddhist, studiously copied Klee’s watercol - in Leopold Zahn’s monograph, Paul Klee: ors in the 1920s while also painting Bod - Leben, Werk, Geist, in 1920. Zahn precedes hisattvas. The source for this copy ( FIG.1 ) was Klee’s quotation with an epigraph from Chi - likely the reproduction of Klee’s Kairuan nese philosopher Zhuangzi, who attests to (1914,38, cat. no. 1147, FIG. 2 ) in Zahn’s book. the select number of geniuses who can attain Koga’s devotion is evidenced by his having the Tao and transcend life and death. 5 The had to imagine the tonal variations from the implication is clearly that Klee is one of them. black and white plate. 11 Klee’s actual painting In Hermann von Wedderkop’s book on Klee, is long missing, so we are grateful for Koga’s also from 1920, he claims that the artist’s efforts, without which it would be far harder painting itself invokes the Tao, and he sug - to conjure the colorful original. gests that Klee’s content appears directly in How could Klee, a non-Buddhist, make his form. 6 Wilhelm Hausenstein published »Buddhist« art? Hausenstein begins his nar - the third book on Klee in 1921, and there Klee rative with a fictional account that is telling, I is said to connect with the Buddha: »he believe. In it, a monk-like man, »like a worker painted[…]with a secret instinct, honoring the or wise man from the Orient,« tries to cross Buddha, who, though thousands of miles the bridge that will dissolve all opposites, this away, lived in the stillness of his paintings.« world and that. Part way across, the man Klee’s abstract painting is expressive, plays his violin, and then he writes and Hausenstein explains, of a deep understand - draws. Playing, writing, and drawing, it is ing of Buddhist emptiness. 7 said, are all the same. 12 The artists, then, One might be critical of these writers’ ahis - whatever his medium, is positioned on the toricism. After all, Zahn, Wedderkop, and bridge between opposites, be they form and Hausenstein associate Far Eastern spiritual - emptiness, content and form, representation ity with Klee at the same time that they locate and abstraction, immanence and transcen - his transformation into a great painter in dence. In the twentieth century, these pairs ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 5 / SPRING 2018 ANGER / KLEE AND JAPAN 105 were often the basis for comparison of West - Heidegger immediately objected— not to ern and Eastern painting, and Klee figured this characterization of Klee, which allows for conspicuously in that philosophical debate. the representational elements within Klee’s As Otto Pöggeler has shown, Shinichi abstraction, but to the characterization of Hisamatsu, later the author of Zen and the modern Western art and Zen as occluding Fine Arts (1971), and philosopher Martin Hei - the symbolic. Pöggeler reports that Heideg - degger took part in the colloquium »Art and ger asked what sort of world it would be if the Thought« in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, symbolic disappeared altogether. 17 In other in 1958. 13 Their discussion warrants our at - words, Heidegger remained committed to tention in some detail. According to Pöggeler, trying to access original truth—much as Klee Hisamatsu claimed that by way of Gei-do claims to on his epitaph—but the philosopher (Japanese art untouched by occidental aes - revised his earlier assessment of Eastern art thetics), »people break in to [or access] the as essentially empty to account for Eastern origin, and so deeply connect with the truth or Western art’s abstraction or representa - of life.« Pöggeler summarizes Hisamatsu’s tion as potentially leading to the revelation of position thus: »Independence from the need original truth. Heidegger’s quick defense of to make form, that is, nothingness, allows for the symbolic at the moment Klee was named an opening to the origin, to creation.« 14 Then suggests his own appreciation for the artist, Heidegger entered the discussion, asserting whose work is rarely completely abstract. In - that »in European art, the artwork brings the deed, Heidegger’s description of art’s making thing (Gebilde) into a picture, it makes it visi - visible echoes Klee’s own words: »Art does ble, whereas in East Asian art, representation not reproduce the visible but rather renders is an obstacle [Hindernis], and the picture is visible.« 18 Even more decisively, when Hei - an obstruction [Hinderung]. « Hisamatsu re - degger and Hisamatsu flipped through a joined Heidegger with the remark that »after book of Klee’s watercolors after the collo - breaking into the origin [as he had character - quium, Heidegger purportedly shared his be - ized the Gei-do], the making visible [which lief that »Klee is a more important painter Heidegger had called European] can become than Picasso.« The Zen art expert responded, an appearance of original truth.« The formu - in reference to one particular Klee, that »it lation neatly allows for both Eastern and has something of Japanese calligraphy in it.« Western art to reveal truth. Heidegger then Heidegger concurred.
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