My take on Paul Klee’s life’s work, and why I like his paintings still!

Klee’s work invites the viewer into his warm emotions towards color and his subject. And let’s there be just “enough” realism or representation to let us in, but once in, we are overcome by color itself. He doesn’t exclude us as some both expressionist and abstract artists do.

Instead, he uses the abstraction and the emotions of color, to include us in his warmth for and towards the world. How he sees is part of the meaning of his art, and he doesn’t lord it over his viewer, but offers it like an old man offers you their reading glasses to help you see more clearly, or maybe a bit differently.

He never just copies what is “out there”, like the Greeks and Romans, or just teaches ethics which was the Greek idea of art’s role, but invites us to encounter it with him, and through his heart’s eyes. Much as Van Gogh did. And others of the post-impressionist.

Art not as imitation or mimetic (Greek) or an objective social realism, but also not so subjective, that you can’t relate. I also like his combination of love of color with child like naïveté! It’s like he blended color theory, cubism with child like primitivism—lots like Chagall, my favorite!

And what comes out is almost like illustrations to a children’s book! Love it, again, after re-sitting with the great Swiss artist, Paul Klee today!

Also, his subtext (or implied, “message”) is not, look how talented I am, as I often feel with Picasso. It is rather, an invitation to look at the world through his kind color loving eyes.

My “take away” is it made we want to make art, and see the world in a kinder way! That made me happy today!

Lastly, he’s not escapist, but had more of a redemptive vision of life, even though he had been through war and lost friends, he still believed in the warmth of colors to heal our vision of things. Nice borrowing his reading glasses today!