Cat and bird

Cat and bird
	Paul Klee , 1928
	Oil and Indian ink on gauze primed with plaster of paris and laid on plywood
	38.1 × 53.2 cm
	Museum of Modern Art , New York

Cat and Bird is the title of a well-known painting by Paul Klee from 1928, the time when the artist was a teacher at the Dessau Bauhaus . The picture shows the broad face of a stylized cat with a small bird sitting on its forehead in a section that fills the format. The painting is now in the New York Museum of Modern Art .

Description and background

Paul Klee has repeatedly made pictures and drawings of cats , the most famous of which is the cat and bird from 1928. The little bird on the forehead of the portrait is actually in the cat's head; it can be assumed that she dreams of the potential prey. The bird only plays a secondary role in the picture, the main character is undisputedly the cat, whose face dominates the format. House cats often like to sit in tight spaces. Her facial expression is characterized by a frightening vigilance, represented by the open eyes with the vertical pupils typical of cats, but also by calm. Klee's colors are muted in this picture, from pink to light brown, as well as bluish, green and violet areas, all in all a warm color scheme that corresponds to the essence of warmth-loving domestic cats. Only the tip of the nose appears in a bright red in the shape of a heart. As a familiar symbol, this heart is said to express a kind of “loving desire”. Klee liked cats and kept them at home and in his studio at times. Above the bird at the upper edge of the picture there is a kind of dark celestial body, a motif that appears more frequently in his pictures. The painter saw the world as the model of a cosmic planetarium that serves to show spiritual truths.

John Sallis , Professor of Philosophy and Curator of the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, describes Klee's paintings as follows:

“There is always something uncanny- unfamiliar, unhomelike- about this upsurgence and simultaneous withdrawal, this rhythm of all rhythms. In spite of his wonderful Cat and Bird painting of 1928 and his domestic devotion to his roguish cat, Fripouille, the fauna of Klee's canvases tend to be of the more uncanny sort- fish and bugs and microorganisms. "

“There is always something uncanny - unknown, uncanny - in this ascent and simultaneous retreat, this rhythm of all rhythms. Despite his wonderful painting (Cat and Bird) from 1928 and his domestic devotion to his mischievous cat Fripouille, the fauna on Klee's canvases appears to be more of an eerie kind - fish, beetles and microorganisms. "

- John Sallis : Paul Klee. Philosophical vision, from nature to art.

The painter wanted to let simple lines, shapes and colors work for himself in his pictures. He called it "the pure cultivation of the means". The visible should recede and instead focus on thinking, imagination and the "hunger of the mind". He wanted to "make hidden visions visible". For the two beings in this picture, he used simple lines and lines in the drawing that are reminiscent of children's drawings, which he saw as “sources of creativity”. So simple pointed oval shapes for the eyes, triangles for the nose, ears and cat's mouth are characteristic of this picture. The bird shows a wave-like reduced line in the drawing as the cat's eye area and is reminiscent of Klee's representations of the graphic meaning of the active , medial and passive lines in their curved form.

The cat represents clover as a kind of “magical eye animal”, the bird is literally impressed on it, as an eternal wish of desire. Both animals belong to the creations of his knowledge, his fantasy for shapes and his suggestive, simplified sign language, which he experienced and trained as a Bauhaus teacher during the time after his trip to Tunis .

The American art historian and former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, William Rubin , interprets cats and birds from the perspective of gestalt psychology and mentions the small formats of Paul Klee's pictures. Things can only happen in the head with small formats; here it is the cat who thinks of the bird and who no longer “wants to get out of her head”. With this picture, Klee speculates on the perhaps unconscious knowledge of the viewer, who otherwise would not understand that the bird is not outside the cat, but only in its obsessive imagination. Rubin is of the opinion that this painting is unique in Klee's work in terms of execution and motif.

Provenance and exhibitions

According to the museum's Provenance Research Project, the artist handed the picture over to Alfred Flechtheim's gallery in Berlin in 1929 , and it came on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1930. In 1934 it was sold to Franz Herbert Hirschland (1880–1973) by Israel Ber Neumann . After his death it was inherited by Susan Ann Hirschland and Joan Ellen Hirschland Meijer. In 1975 it was given as a gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York (in memory of FH Hirschland).

March 18 to April 24, 1928: Paul Klee solo exhibition in the Alfred Flechtheim gallery.
February 20 to September 19, 2004: The MoMA in Berlin , Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin

reception

Like many other works by Klee, Cat and Bird is an often used template for school art lessons.

Géraldine Elschner, Peggy Nille: The cat and the bird. After a picture by Paul Klee (= Prestel art picture books; Prestel junior ). Prestel, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7913-7091-0 ( cdn.reseau-canope.fr [PDF] French: Le chat et l'oiseau. Paul Klee . Paris 2011. Translated by Katharina Knüppel).

literature

René Crevel: Paul Klee . Portrait of Georges Aubert. Gallimard, Paris 1930, p. 45 ( gallica.bnf.fr or wikisource ).
Marina Alberghini: Il gatto cosmico di Paul Klee . Ugo Mursia Editore, Milan 2012, ISBN 978-88-425-5068-6 (Italian, deals with the artist's relationship with cats).

Web links

Cat and bird paul-klee.org

Individual evidence

^ The Berlin literary criticism: Paul Klee - the inexhaustible. "The Klee Universe" by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Review by Klaus Hammer on February 3, 2009
↑ John Sallis: Paul Klee. Philosophical vision, from nature to art . McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill 2012, p. 49 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
↑ ^a ^b Harriet Schoenholz Bee: MoMA highlights: 325 works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York . Ed .: Museum of Modern Art. Abrams, New York 1999, ISBN 0-8109-6201-2 , pp. 116 ( moma.org ).
^ Paul Klee: Pedagogical Sketchbook. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2003 (reprint), ISBN 3-7861-1458-7 , p. 6 ff. ( Uni-heidelberg.de ).
↑ Carola Giedion-Welcker : Paul Klee in self-testimonies and image documents. Rowohlt's monographs, Reinbek 1961, p. 108 ff.
^ William S. Rubin in: Exhibition catalog Das MoMA in Berlin. Masterpieces from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hantje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1389-1 , p. 301 f.
^ Paul Klee: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, March 18 - Easter 1928. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin 1928, OCLC 82462337 .

[1] The Berlin literary criticism: Paul Klee - the inexhaustible. "The Klee Universe" by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Review by Klaus Hammer on February 3, 2009

[2] John Sallis: Paul Klee. Philosophical vision, from nature to art . McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill 2012, p. 49 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

[MOMA-3] Harriet Schoenholz Bee: MoMA highlights: 325 works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York . Ed .: Museum of Modern Art. Abrams, New York 1999, ISBN 0-8109-6201-2 , pp. 116 ( moma.org ).

[4] Paul Klee: Pedagogical Sketchbook. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2003 (reprint), ISBN 3-7861-1458-7 , p. 6 ff. ( Uni-heidelberg.de ).

[5] Carola Giedion-Welcker : Paul Klee in self-testimonies and image documents. Rowohlt's monographs, Reinbek 1961, p. 108 ff.

[6] William S. Rubin in: Exhibition catalog Das MoMA in Berlin. Masterpieces from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hantje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1389-1 , p. 301 f.

[7] Paul Klee: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, March 18 - Easter 1928. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin 1928, OCLC 82462337 .