Das bildnerische Denken.

Schriften zur Form- und Gestaltungslehre by Paul Klee

Review by: Georgine Oeri
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Sep., 1957), pp. 140-141
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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140

REVIEWS

"First, Gauguin proceeds to Tahiti already in possession of the image of the tropics from
a journey to Martinique," Baird says; but the journey to Panama and Martinique is not
the first station, nor is it the decisive station before Gauguin's Pacific journey. "Second,
his moral view is already formulated by a tradition of his predecessors in Oceania," Baird
says; but the point is how he accepted or criticized these predecessors. He disliked Loti's
moral attitude, he read Leconte de Lisle's poems, but especially he used Moerenhout's
more than fifty-year-old books on the Pacific. This last source is of great importance for
the understanding of Gauguin's primitivism. His manuscript on the Catholic religion
shows his particular ambition to reconcile modern science, religion, and primitivism.
Now it may be said that Baird does not have to be a specialist on Gauguin. But I think
he has to be if his comparisons between Melville and Gauguin are to be taken seriously.
"Melville's art . . . merges with the symbolic elements of Gauguin's art rather than with
the representational matter of William Sidney Mount's paintings of the American frontier."
A statement of this sort I cannot discuss until I know if Baird can show what Melville
and Gauguin had in common. A discussion of this sort is not performed in Baird's book;
because of such a lack I think that there is something wrong in his method.
TEDDY BRUNIUS
KLEE, PAUL. Das bildnerischeDenken. Schriften zur Form- und Gestaltungslehre.Heraus-

gegeben und bearbeitet von Jiirg Spiller. Basel, 1956, Benno Schwabe & Co. Verlag,
pp. 572, more than 1200 ills., many in color, 76.00 S. Frs.
"I would like to stress from the outset that my willingness [to teach] is based on the
realization that in the long run I can not, in good conscience, avoid assuming a serious
teaching activity. It seems to me most important for you to emphasize the fact that you
want an artist for an instructor who is alive and contemporary enough in spirit to direct
young people." This was how Paul Klee stated-in the summer of 1919, at the age of forty,
his reputation as an artist firmly established-his role as a teacher, which was to absorb
and fulfill him thereafter for more than a decade during his years of maturity.
As it turned out, he did not join the faculty of the Stuttgart Academy of Art-Oskar
Schlemmer, to whom the cited letter was addressed, could not secure his appointment
against the opposition of conservative faculty members-but a year later, in the fall of
1920, he accepted the unanimous call from Gropius and six other Bauhaus instructors to
become a master at the Bauhaus in Weimar.
Shortly after he had established himself, Klee wrote to his wife: "Here in the studio I
am working at a half a dozen paintings, I draw and I keep thinking about my course, everything simultaneously, for it has to work together or else it will not work at all. The organic
unity of it preserves my strength."
It is this coincidence that Klee the artist and Klee the teacher functioned harmoniously
and in mutual stimulation-that he not only was able but felt the need to operate in both
areas at once in order to come to the realization of his potential-which has resulted in his
writings on pictorial thinking, presented here for the first time.
The presentation is excellent. It appears to be an accomplishment of cooperation between editor and publisher which makes itself felt throughout, affecting seemingly minor
details of layout and typography. The arrangement between text and illustration follows
as closely as possible plans which Klee himself had worked on. It is not only a matter of
reproducing all the charts and illustrations Klee had invented to explain and amplify his
ideas on pictorial organization in his classes. The theoretical part is broadened and elucidated-in a score-like orchestration of simultaneous presence-with reproductions of the
free, creative work by the artist.
Jiirg Spiller accomplished this editorial job with faithful and discerning devotion.
Beyond it he indefatigably annotated the main text of Klee's classroom notebooks with
marginal additions the artist himself made later on, as his experience and insight increased.
In addition there is an appendix which furnishes notes for comparison, drawn from Klee's
diaries and correspondence, and gives a vast amount of cross reference to publications
on Klee as well as reference to works by him reproduced elsewhere.

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141

REVIEWS

What emerges is an intimate picture of the creative personality Paul Klee, if not, indeed,
of the creative personality. One participates in the creative process in a way that seems to
be unprecedented. Singular circumstances had to converge for its "recording." The artist
who was engaged in "not merely rendering the seen, but revealing the invisible" was endowed with poetic powers which enabled him to seize the abundance of his imagination
also in word images.
GEORGINEOERI
WINGLER, HANS MARIA. Oskar Kokoschka. Das Werk des Malers. Salzburg,

1956, Verlag

Galerie Welz, pp. 401 including 131 full-page ills. in black and white, 35 full-page plates
in color, and 39 ills. in the text. (Price not quoted.)
This is an imposing opus, an indispensable source-book destined to play as important a
role in the literature on Kokoschka as did Lionello Venturi's catalogue raisonng of C6zanne's work in the literature on Cezanne. In Mr. Wingler's volume, the oeuvreof Kokoschka
the painter is reproduced in its entirety, partly on full-size plates and partly in reduced
size in the oeuvre catalogue. As the author himself states, in the literature of art criticism,
subjectivity has so far stood in the way of any all-embracing, objective examination of
Kokoschka's work and the time is not yet ripe for a full and comprehensive interpretation,
which would have to include a consideration of the psychological aspect. "The complete
enumeration of the total work of Kokoschka, in the first place that of his paintings, is
the object of this publication, which is to be followed at some interval by a similar book
dealing with his graphic work." In ten years of conscientious work the author has completed this task with great patience and devotion. In the introductory essay to this largesize volume (23 x 30 cm) he now adds his own to the existing subjective views. On 74 pages,
the character and history of Kokoschka's art are discussed and well documented; the problems of color and composition in relation to the subject matter are analyzed-a very important problem especially in the case of this master. In the last chapter of his essay the
author deals with the function of the picture, at the same time demonstrating the artist's
philosophy of life and his views on aesthetics. Two contributions by Kokoschka supplement the essay: the lecture "On the Nature of Visions," written in 1912, and the hitherto
unprinted study, "The Essentials of the Visual Arts," especially written for this volume.
In the two sections of the latter contribution, "Non-Objective Art" and "The Eye of
Darius," Kokoschka defends his world view and discusses current abstract tendencies in art.
The introductory part of the book contains 44 illustrations. Of these 5 are full-page color
reproductions (watercolors and one poster) and 4 small-size colored reproductions of
pastels. The full-page plates (131 black and white and 30 color reproductions) make up the
main part of the volume. Of excellent quality, they bring Kokoschka's work as close to
the reader as is possible with a great colorist in this form.
The oeuvre catalogue of paintings (394 titles), of plastic and other works (17 titles)
which follows, is accompanied by several Classified Indices. Most important of these is
the Index according to Subject Matter. The Bibliography is an heroic attempt at completeness and the author probably comes close to achieving this objective. In its first section, it comprises a list of publications by Kokoschka, in the second section a list of publications on Kokoschka as well as an Index of Catalogues. An Alphabetical List of Publications
provides a key to this documentary part comprising 700 titles.
The art historian and the future biographer of Kokoschka will find the concluding section of the book, entitled "Synchronized Summary," especially helpful. In chronological
order it gives the most important data from the life and work of the artist-events, journeys, meetings, the work itself, publications, performances of plays, and exhibitions and
catalogues-from 1886 to June 1956.
J. P. HODIN
LAMPSON,

DOMINIQUE. Les Effigies des Peintres

Celkbres des Pays-Bas.

Edition

critique

par Jean Puraye. Brussels and Paris, 1956, Desclee de Brouwer, pp. 71.
The reasons which lead us to grant a particular welcome to modern editions of some of

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