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 interpreta- tion. 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 descri- bed 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, un- even 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 diago- nal 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 diago- nal cross and on the other, by a small squa- re framed in a crescent at the bottom right- hand corner. A year earlier in the waterco- lour Seelen Wanderung (Transmigration of a Soul 1923, 133), Klee had made a verti- cal 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.