Thistle picture

‘Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible’, wrote Klee in 1918, articulating one of his fundamental artistic premises in the essay ‘Creative Credo’. While nature was his ultimate model for artistic activity, Klee did not aspire to repeat its external forms, but rather to replicate its internal forces of creation. These forces, in combination with the artist’s fertile imagination, led to the creation of the fantastic realms that are such a distinguishing feature of much of his work.

Thistle picture is an important example of this aspect of Klee’s practice. Dating from his early years at the Weimar Bauhaus, the work presents a mysterious world of ambiguous, floating forms. Some of these, such as the central flower-like shape with jagged leaves, are suggestive of the natural world; others, such as the ladder, derive from the constructed world; while others still, such as the hovering bellows-shaped form that bears a schematic face, are purely imaginary. Although the meaning of the work is enigmatic, the sense of an ‘other’ world – perhaps underwater, perhaps aerial – is strongly conveyed, not only through the forms but also through the work’s construction. The dominant colour is a subtly modulated blue-grey, which varies in translucency, opacity and tonality, creating an undulating spatial depth in which the forms float. The forms themselves are picked out in delicate washes of purple, brown, crimson and orange that have been brushed over paper stencils. The resulting shadowy haloes that surround the crisp outline of the forms contribute to their ethereal nature. A mysterious and evocative work, Thistle picture opens the viewer to the possibilities of realities other than the visible.

Text by Cathy Leahy from Prints and Drawings in the International Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 110.