Paul Klee: The Nature of Creation, Works, 1914-1940
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Architecture
Paul Klee: The Nature of Creation, Works, 1914-1940 Details
From Library Journal "I cannot be pinned down here and now/ because I live as well with the dead/ as with the unborn./ Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual,/ And still not close enough." Klee's tombstone engraving speaks volumes to the way the Swiss artist lived and died, which art scholar Kudielka and artist Riley attempt to capture here. Klee (1879-1940) was a fundamentalist of sorts who spent his life tapping into and maintaining the flow of his creative source; his was a honing of skill into its barest necessity. The development of his work over the last 26 years of his life is lavishly illustrated in this volume, which clearly delineates how he extracted nonessential elements to create pure rhythm and polyphony. The authors provide a succinct discussion of Klee's later work, with interesting snippets from his writing. They manage to mirror the style and thrust of Klee himself: a great mass of information concerning the artist is distilled into essential words and pictures. Klee believed that to paint was simply to put the right color in the right place, a deceptively simple concept ably reflected here. Still, while this is a wonderfully illustrated book, it ultimately offers little new understanding of the artist. Recommended for libraries needing quality color images by Klee and larger public libraries looking to complement more challenging books on Klee by Jean-Louis Ferrier, Roland Doschka, and Carolyn Lanchner. Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OHCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Read more Review Beautifully illustrated this book provides an intelligent insight into the creative --process Read more
Reviews
An art book (catalogue for a Klee exhibition of some years ago) that appears stronger on text than on illustration. This might be fine for the study of works by many artists, but I think that Klee's art needs true, clear color reproduction in order to fully understand what he was working toward. Of three books on Klee that I recently bought through Amazon, this is, for me (a layman with scant art history background), the least impressive.