This intimate tribute to Paul Klee’s 1937 Blue Night (Blaue Nacht) is a part of a diptych, with Homage to Paul Klee (Blue Night) #1 comprising the other panel. Both works celebrate Klee’s fascination with how one can manipulate abstract possibilities in both art and music. Therefore, it too reflects a fusion of abstraction and poetic nuance. Together, the two 8-inch panels of the diptych demonstrate how Klee’s musical methodology can manifest through contrasting formal vocabularies, one staccato and architectural, the other legato and organic.
Contemplating the second of the two homages, it is striking how #2 transforms the painted visual score into something more fluid and improvisational. While using almost the same color palette, the curved forms and organic shapes suggest a mellower, more lyrical interpretation. The undulating bands weave through the composition like melodic lines, creating a sense of temporal flow that evokes Klee’s process-oriented approach to painting. Or, as Werner Haftmann wrote in his book, The Mind and Work of Paul Klee (1954), Klee taught his students: “Not form, but forming, not form as final appearance, but form in the process of becoming, as genesis.”.
Indeed, Klee adapted musical concepts of temporality to his visual work, building paintings through accumulated marks and decisions over time. Homage to Paul Klee (Blue Night) #2 does as well. The curved forms in this piece embody that temporal unfolding more explicitly for you can almost trace the rhythmic movement of the artist’s eye as the shapes flow and intersect.
As was the case with Homage to Paul Klee #1, the combination of a musical and visual alignment was accomplished through systematic color placement and directional shifts. Each shape functions on its own terms and is also a distinct note contributing to an overall harmonic structure. As with the earlier work, the initial stage was mapped out using a grid. This was followed by creating a mutating pattern within the grid. Then a systematiccoding was used, resulting in forms with dissimilar color shapes. This result was further manipulated and enhanced through perceptual engagement.
Klee’s Blue Night (Blaue Nacht) is part of the collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. It was created in 1937 and is considered one of Klee’s most notable works.
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Amy Ione
Title: Homage to Paul Klee (Blue Night) #2
Date: 2018
Medium: Acrylic on wood panel
Dimensions: 8x8x1
Catalog Number: 29378
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See also “Klee and Kandinsky Polyphonic Painting, Chromatic Chords and Synaesthesia” in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11, No. 3–4, 2004, pp. 148–58.
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