Sometimes referred to by an alternative title, Head of a Man Going Senile, this painting, more commonly known as Senecio, was done by Swiss-German artist, Paul Klee, as a bit of humor. Supposedly it is a portrait of an artist-performer created by Klee to represent the shifting relationship between art, illusion, and drama. In it, however, one can also see Klee’s response to the African art that had so captured Picasso, Braque, and others in the early 20th century. It focuses on geometric shapes, a flat appearance, and the use of eye-catching color. Much has been made of the treatment of the eyebrows, where the right one is a semi-circle in black, while the left is a triangle of white sitting quizzically like a small pyramid over the left eye. The vibrant colors range from soft pink for the jowls, to strong red eye balls, and on to a range of oranges and yellows to complete the hairless head. Senecio is actually the name of a plant from the Daisy family. The name in Latin means “Old Man.”
Paul Klee (1879-1940) came by his humor, his love of color, and his appreciation for African art through a background of music. His father, who was a music teacher, was proud to have a son who was so accomplished as a violinist that he was invited to perform with the local music association (Bern, Switzerland) at the age of 11. His parents saw a future for him in music, but alas, as a young man, he rebelled against that and headed toward the plastic arts. As an artist he was known to draw very well though his early works lacked a sense of color.
Klee did music and drawing in his years after having studied art in Munich. He joined with painters Franz Marc and Vassily Kandinsky in the Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) movement in 1911. He was exposed to Cubism and abstract art by Robert Delaunay in 1914. However, it was his trip to Tunisia in 1914 that opened his soul to color. The brilliant light of the Tunisian sun on the wonderfully colored buildings and the blue waters of the Mediteranean inspired him to search through his many talents to reach a goal, which he stated as creating a style that connected drawing to the realm of color. In this he was not unlike another famous artist influenced by the colors of a city on the sea. Tintoretto, whose world was Venice, kept in his studio a sign saying, “The drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian” as a reminder of his desire to master both.
Klee is associated with a number of early 20th century movements. He participated in Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Futurism, working with oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, and etching, all the while developing his mastery of tonality and color. Take a look at Black Columns in a Landscape, 1919.
This is a picture of a park that sits on the banks of the River Isar in Munich, Germany. Klee’s painting is in watercolor, a perfect choice of medium for capturing delicate tonal variations in color. The use of warm pinks, cool blues, and soft earthy browns, yellows and green give the artist a range of colors to represent the elements in the park and city, with the blue of the sky and the river to partially surround the images. The black and brown columns, but especially the black ones, stand as abstract representations of buildings, but are also a good counterpoint to the soft pastel colors.
This painting probably started as Klee normally did, with a dot or a doodle. He laughingly called this approach what happens when you “take a line for a walk.” It is really a type of musical score, only instead of black music notes, it uses a crescent moon, stars, plants, and symbols to create the references to Bach’s fugues. Bach was known as the master of counterpoint in his musical compositions. Here we see Klee balancing dark and light in a similar way. The Austrian poet Rainier Maria Rilke wrote in 1921 that he guessed, “Klee was a violinist because his drawings often seemed transcriptions of music.”
In 1920, Paul Klee became a professor at the famous Bauhaus (1919-1933), a German school established by architect Walter Gropius with the idea of combining crafts and fine arts to create work that was elegant yet practical, a combination of aesthetics and function. That school became a major force in modern architecture and design, and it was where Paul Klee continued his exploration of color theory, shown in his development of the color wheel.
Kelly Richman-Abdou has a wonderful piece at My Modern Met on Paul Klee, as a music-inspired artist mymodernmet.com in which she quotes from a work called Bauhaus 100 saying Klee, “developed his own color theory based on a six-part rainbow shaped into a color wheel,” Bauhaus100 explains. “He placed the complementary colors in relation to movements that interact with one another, which shows this theory is based on dynamic transitions.” Richman-Abdou goes on to explain how music played a key role in the use of color and the avant-garde direction that abstract art took. (Click the link above for the article.)
It is said that Klee could “improvise freely on a keyboard of colors.” Here in this pointillist style piece, Klee expresses in color harmonies the definition of polyphony, which is the blending of different melodies and harmonizing them with one another. It shows in physical representation his color theory, which has complimentary colors making dynamic transitions from one to another. Klee created a number of works known as his Operatic Series, which were based on works such as Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and J.S. Bach’s fugues.
His lectures at Bauhaus even included notes with musical references as part of the script. His work, Cooling in the Gardens of the Torrid Zone (seen here on the left) is a great example of a musical drawing. For an excellent look at Klee’s relationship with music and painting, Ursula Rehn-Wolfman’s article “Paul Klee – Painting and Music” is an great overview of his career and its influences, interlude.hk.
Paul Klee left Germany after the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933 because the Nazi government felt its work to be communist. Klee’s work was seen by the Nazis as degenerate, so he left Germany for Switzerland. Even in Switzerland where he was born, he did not receive his citizenship (yes, even those born there must apply for citizenship) until after his death because his works were looked upon with cultural suspicion. Six days after his death in 1940 from schleroderma, a debilitating wasting disease, the Swiss govenment granted him citizenship. Klee left behind a body of some 9,000 pieces of art work, proving indeed that what he had claimed about himself after his visit to Tunisia was true. “Color and I are one. I am a painter.”
Articles used for this blogpost are from the Interlude website article, “Paul Klee-Painting and Music” by Ursula Rehn Wolfman at interlude.hk and “How Music Played a Pivotal Role in the Colorful Avant-Garde Direction of Modern Art,” by Kelly Richman-Abdou on My Modern Met at mymodernmet.com
Paintings by Klee are in public domain with several offered by the Metropolitan Museum in New York as open source items.
Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com
Tunisian Wine from Cap Bon
Tunisia and wine? Yes, and since early times. One must remember that the Carthaginians, whose capital and home base was on the north coast of Tunisia, once ruled the seas and the trade in the western Mediterranean. They transported goods all over that area, and among the goods they shipped were great quantities of wine. When the Romans, finally after many battles, conquered Carthage and set out to destroy it forever, including sowing salt into its farmlands and burning its libraries, there was one 26 volume work that was spared. That was the work on agriculture by a writer known as Mago (or Magon), the Father of Farming. It covered farming techniques from North Africa to Lebanon and included the wisdom of both the native Berber farmers and the ancient Phoenicians. It substantially raised the level of Roman viticulture.
In modern times, wine production in Tunisia may come as a surprise since one thinks of Tunisia as a Muslim country, therefore, dry in terms of alcohol. The country does battle with this since Islam does forbid alcoholic drinks. However, Tunisia still moves toward being a modern country, so alcohol is not prohibited. However, obtaining it may lead one to either very expensive luxury hotels and restaurants or rather seedy, disreputable bars. The fact still remains that Tunisia has a ancient history of wine making and even with the loss of some of the techniques and resources brought by former French colonists, Tunisia’s wine industry continues to continue.
While one thinks of Tunisia as being the Sahara Desert, its northern coastal region has a perfect climate for viticulture. Cap Bon is the place where 80% of the wine from Tunisia is produced. Les Vignerons de Cartage Vieux Magon or Old Magon from the Winemakers of Carthage is in fact the name of a best-selling wine. Les Vignerons de Cartage is the cooperative of wine produces that control about 2/3s of the lands used for growing grapes in the Cap Bon region of Tunisia. In total there are around 80,000 acres of vineyards in Cap Bon, which as its name suggests is a good area. This northern region which faces the sea has the climate not dissimilar to that of southern France in Provence and Languedoc. The grapes grown are the same as those in France, Grenach, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot, along with that favorite of white grapes, Chardonnay.
The main focus remains to be the reds. However, with that similar climate to southern France, Tunisia also produces a respectable rosé. The Vieux Magon mentioned above from Les Vignerons de Cartage has an AOC listing as Mornag Grand Cru and is a white wine that runs around $16.00 per bottle.
In recent years, post the Arab Spring, Tunisia has begun to focus on wine tourism. In an effort to create a complete tourist experience, the vintners have begun to work with local bed and breakfast owners near the ancient ruins of Dougga to offer package tours of these impressive ruins and the nearby vineyards with tastings of their wines. The head of the Vignerons (Winemakers) see this type of tourism as the future of this region and a way to get Tunisian wines better known. We can only hope for their great success.
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©marjorie vernelle 2021
Coming Soon: The Riviera’s Painter of Indecisive Colors and Côte de Provence Wines.
Yes, the French Riviera is beautiful, and Pierre Bonnard’s work will not let anyone forget that. Beauty and color in ever beneficient sunlight. Add a bit of Côte de Provence wine, and one is close to paradise.