Text by Michael Baumgartner, Jonathan Fineberg, Rudi Fuchs.
Friedrich Froebel's invention of the kindergarten in the nineteenth century and Rudolf Steiner's educational theory at the start of the twentieth century had enormous consequences for modern art--above all in their theorizings of childhood creativity. Paul Klee in particular was greatly influenced by their work and the particular qualities of children's art, as his finger paintings and puppets, as well as his writings, attest. Following Klee's lead, and in the wake of the Second World War, the loose collective of artists known as CoBrA (from the initials of the members' home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam) embraced childhood creativity as a redemptive freedom against the comparative formal strictures of earlier avant gardes. This volume examines the dialogue that Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn and Joseph Noiret forged with the art of Paul Klee, underlining Klee's more playful and mischievous qualities.
Featured image, Paul Klee's Animals Perform a Comedy, 1937, is reproduced from Klee and CoBrA: Child's Play.
"The expressive potential of childrean was an important source of artistic imspiration for both Klee and the patinters of the Cobra group. For Klee and other avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso, the discovery of the art of both children and 'primitive' peoples opened up a completely new realm of artistic creativity and provided a decisive stimulus in their drive to liberate art from the stranglehold of centuries-old conventions and traditions. The realization that the essence of art is not formal 'beauty' but expression was nothing less than an artistic revolution. Klee's fascination with the pictorial expressiveness of children, which in the later works especially manifests itself in some truly bizarre creations, in fact, finds articulation throughout his oeuvre. This is exemplified in his grappling with the iconography of his own childhood drawings and those of his son Felix, and experiments such as the 'blind' drawings on the nineteen-twenties as well as his radical repudiation of all formal getters and return to the unmediated emotion of childhood in the nineteen-thirties."
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 10.5 in. / 224 pgs / 215 color / 9 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $70 ISBN: 9783775729833 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 10/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Jonathan Fineberg, Rudi Fuchs.
Friedrich Froebel's invention of the kindergarten in the nineteenth century and Rudolf Steiner's educational theory at the start of the twentieth century had enormous consequences for modern art--above all in their theorizings of childhood creativity. Paul Klee in particular was greatly influenced by their work and the particular qualities of children's art, as his finger paintings and puppets, as well as his writings, attest. Following Klee's lead, and in the wake of the Second World War, the loose collective of artists known as CoBrA (from the initials of the members' home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam) embraced childhood creativity as a redemptive freedom against the comparative formal strictures of earlier avant gardes. This volume examines the dialogue that Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn and Joseph Noiret forged with the art of Paul Klee, underlining Klee's more playful and mischievous qualities.
