After almost four months of lockdown, I decided the time has come to take my bike and ride into London to visit a gallery. Only a few commercial galleries re-opened since 15th June, and many of them welcome visitors by appointment only. I booked the grand event at David Zwirner to visit “Late Klee” (open until 31st July 2020), a display of sketches and paintings made by the German artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) between 1930 and 1940.
Because of the political and economic uncertainty coming from BREXIT and the pandemic, I have been looking at history frequently. This also determined my choice to see Klee’s exhibition, whose oeuvre I remember from the years spent studying fine art in Venice. When I think of Klee’s work, my mind goes back to prof Riccardo Caldura’s classes in which he explained the significance of displaying a small oil-transfer Klee made in 1920, “Angelus Novus”, at Documenta XII (Kassel, 2005). The history of this work is as important as the piece itself. In fact, after buying it in 1921, the philosopher Walter Benjamin interpreted the depicted figure as “the angel of history”.
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress”.
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History“, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken Books, 1969: 249.
I think Angelus Novus is the work which best represents this very moment in our lives in which Coronavirus forced us to think, test, and develop new ways of living.
So, here I am at David Zwirner wearing my pink bandana like a bandit. “Late Klee” occupies two stories of the Georgian building in Grafton Street and does not include “Angelus Novus”. The exhibition displays an array of small works, mostly drawings, Klee made between the years the Nazi party was gaining power and the return to his home country, Switzerland, in 1933, showcasing works made until Klee’s passed over on 29th June 1940.
These drawings are neat lines with no chiaroscuro, a style that allowed Klee to clearly represent his imagery by taking out the unnecessary. In observing such firm lines, drawn with no hesitation as if the artist was in a state of illumination, visitors can find calm. This, I think, is further enhanced as the curatorial strategy seems not to stress much on the socio-political turmoil that marked the years between the two World wars to allow an ample view on Klee’s varied subjects.
As if the missing of Angelus Novus from the showcase allows us to forget the weight of history, we leave the exhibition with a sense of relief and tranquillity. Maybe even with the hope that our future will find clarity through smart and firm decisions in the style of late Klee’s clear and straightforward drawing technique.
