Paul Klee: Fugue in Red

Paul Klee (1879-1940) craved

the freedom to explore radical and modernist experimentations in his
paintings. In music, however, he could never come to terms with
contemporary works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. In fact, he
even disliked the compositions of Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler. Klee
was a gifted musician who studied voice, piano, organ and violin at
the Stuttgart Conservatory. At age 11, he became a member of the
violin section of the Bern Music Association, and was on track for a
professional musical career. Yet during his teenage years, Klee
decided to focus on the visual arts because he found the idea of
going in for music creatively not particularly attractive in view of the
decline in the history of musical achievement. For Klee, modern
music lacked meaning, and he believed that the ultimate greatness of
Bach and Mozart could never be reproduced in the musical medium.
For Klee, the music of Bach and Mozart was the essential key to the
mysteries of creation. Both composers, according to Klee, aspired to
the notion of universality. Their musical compositions hold appeal for
everyone, the connoisseur, the professional and the amateur. Since
music in the 20th century had lost this sense of universality, Klee
envisioned an art of the future, which translated the musical
accomplishments of Bach and Mozart into visual terms. Klee became
intensely preoccupied with the parallels between music and painting,
and in his opinion rhythm was an important link between the two
genres, capable of illustrating temporal movements in both.
Theoretically, the philosopher and social critic Theodore Adorno had
described these points of convergence between music and painting,
but practically, it was Paul Klees work that visually revealed the
points of contact between two different art forms.

Credit: http://bauhaus-online.de/

Klee perceived a clear visual connection to the structural articulations

found in music. Focusing on polyphony and counterpoint, Klee
produced his watercolor Fugue in Red in 1921. This early attempt to
achieve a synthesis between music and art exposes a number of
floating forms, either figurative or as abstract derivations.
Overlapping shapes float over a two-dimensional surface, with the
temporal aspect graphically represented by a gradual shift in color.
Moving from the dark background to maximum transparency, the
visualized counterpoint combines in a cosmic harmony that reaches
towards a new sense of spirituality. Although essentially structural in
approach, this painting embodies Klees believe in harmony,
autonomy, and universality in humankind. As a musician and a
painter, Klee essentially created a harmonious arrangement that
echoes a universal order.
For the novelist Wilhelm Hausenstein, Klees attitude is immediately
understandable for musical people. Klee is one of the most
delightsome violinists, playing Bach and Mozart, who ever walked on
earth. For Klee, the musical world became his companion, possibly
even a part of his art. Given the ease with which Klee moved
between artistic worlds, it is hardly surprising that a number of
composers have musically encoded his paintings as well. Among
them, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Edison Denisov and

Tru Takemitsu, to name only a selected few. On occasion, you can

still hear Gunther Schullers Seven Studies on Klee Pictures performed
on stage. Composed in 1959, the work is located halfway between
jazz and classical music. Each of the seven pieces bears a slightly
different relationship to the original Klee picture from which it stems,
Schuller wrote. Some relate to the actual design, shape, or color
scheme of the painting, while others take the general mode of the
picture or its title as a point of departure. The music of Bach and
Mozart has inspired some of the most progressive art of our time, and
artists like Paul Klee devoted their lives to translate this universal
music into the language of visual art.