Author: John SallisPublisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438454805
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A philosophical perspective on the relation between Paul Klees art and his thought. The artist Paul Klee once said that art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible. In Klees Mirror John Sallis examines the various ways in which Klees art makes visible things that ordinarily go unseen. He shows how Klees art is like a mirror capable of reflecting not only the surface appearance of things, but also their hidden depth and the cosmic setting to which they belong. Tracing the relation of Klees paintings and drawings to music, poetry, and philosophy, Sallis also takes account of Klees own extensive writings, both theoretical and autobiographical, and of the incisive lectures that he presented while teaching at the Bauhaus. Featuring large, high-quality reproductions, Klees Mirror shows how the painters theories both are exemplified in his art and, in turn, are enhanced and extended by what his art achieves and reveals. Klees Mirror is a masterful interpretation of one of the most inspiring artists in the Western tradition, one that will surely capture the interest of philosophers, art history scholars, as well as students and lovers of Paul Klees works. Alejandro A. Vallega, author of Sense and Finitude: Encounters at the Limits of Language, Art, and the Political Paul Klee mused in his diary that his art was a kind of mirror whose aim was not to reflect the surface but rather to penetrate inside such that, for example, his human faces are truer than the real ones. In his exquisite new study, Sallis takes up the complex question of Klees mysterious mirrors. On the one hand, Klees works themselves are mirrors of truth, making visible, Sallis tells us, what otherwise remains invisible, reflecting what lies beyond the visible surface of things. On the other hand, Klees own theoretical writings are extraordinarily articulate and they uniquely mirror his artistic work. Klees paintings are not, however, illustrations or representations of Klees ideas. The mirror of Klees painting demands a new kind of reflective writing. Finally, there is the mirror of Sallis own work, deftly navigating between Klees brilliant double mirror play, producing in turn a startlingly and innovative mode of writing that twists free of the dualism of sensibility and intelligibility. Jason M. Wirth, author of The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Time
