Tag Archives: Paul Klee

How Hummingbird?

Yesterday I saw a show by Patrick Howlett. It fit well with my recent thoughts on Stella because Howlett’s work is also distinguished by sheer pictorial invention. Abstraction should not mean but be, to paraquote a famous poet. The largest … Continue reading

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Modernist Method

An example of modernist practice in its purest form might be the paintings of Paul Klee. He starts with a formal idea, a method, a sense of how relationships should play out, and the work is generated from that. Whether … Continue reading

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Angelus Novus

If we accept Benjamin’s reading of Klee’s Angelus Novus, that it is moving backwards into the future while watching the increasing pile up of wreckage we call modernity, then it is also looking at us, who are a little further … Continue reading

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Future Retrospect

Backstory as context stays in the here and now, and so keeps faith with modernism. Backstory as nervous anticipation of future criticism is a retrospective literary mode, and as such recalls Benjamin’s angel, who is always looking backward as he … Continue reading

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