Paul Klee. Paul Klee
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Название: Paul Klee

Автор: Paul Klee

Издательство: Parkstone International Publishing

Жанр: Иностранные языки

Серия: Temporis

isbn: 978-1-78310-753-7, 978-1-78042-978-6

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СКАЧАТЬ Sunday, March 23rd, in the morning. That evening, San Carlo: Mefistofele. Monday, the harbour; in the afternoon, Posillipo. Tuesday, San Martino-Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. German Consulate, Aquarium. In those three days I saw so much that my account cannot even remotely keep up with it. Next to Genoa, Naples is indolent, dirty, and sick. Next to Naples, Genoa is one-sided. Naples displays the greatest pomp beside the greatest misery – harbour life, rides along the Corso, sophisticated opera, even a touch of Rome: the Museo Nazionale. In addition, the matchless, paradisiacal scenery. The sea is more powerful in Genoa, but also more monotonous. Here, a real bay surrounded by singular coastal mountains and locked in by colourful islands. And I can see all this from the balcony of my room. It lies at my feet, a giant hemisphere, the magnificent city with its roaring voice. On the left, the old town with the harbours and old Vesuvius; on the right, the modern Villa Nazionale and the Posillipo. Around the house and behind it, gardens with fresh greenery, fantastic shapes and a thousand blossoms. This splendid lookout is called Salita del Petrajo, Villa de Rosa 48, Pensione Haase, Napoli. The sea is gorgeously blue and quiet. The city, an animated mixture of patches, blocks of houses in sunlight and shadow, white streets, dark green parks. The prospect is a reminder of Christ’s temptation. Sheer joy gives me wings, suspends me at the centre of spheric splendour, at the world’s navel. But there is work too, it is not always like this hour of rest. Below at the harbour, you try to make your way through an incredible world that sounds quite different from what it is in the song of “Santa Lucia”. What people they are down there! Ugly and poor, they lie about in the sun, sick, lousy, tattered, half naked. I am neutral – attracted to them without pity, with a kind of knowledge-hungry aversion. One delight of the artist is to let himself be thoroughly infected like this. I smile as I rebel against it, I know my art needs this as a basis. Its blossoms will wilt easily until the great strengthening. May the day of proof come. To be able to reconcile the opposites! To express the great manifold in a single word!

      The aquarium is extremely stimulating. Especially expressive are such native creatures as octopi, starfish, and mussels. And snake-like monstrosities with poisonous eyes, huge mouths, and pocket-like gullets. Others sit in sand over their ears, like humanity sunk in its prejudice. The vulgar octopi stare out like art-dealers; one in particular eyed me with compromising familiarity, as if I were a new Böcklin and he a second Gurlitt. Niente affari! A gelatinous, angelic little creature (transparent and spiritual) swam on its back with incessant movement, swirling a delicate pennon. The ghost of a sunken steamship. Upstairs in the library the frescos of Marees. A half-year before, the subject matter would have been quite strange to me, but now I can feel my way into it. The presentation deeply and sincerely appealed to me. Certain works of Marees at Schleissheim misled me in regard to him (a judgement that was later completely reversed).

      In the Museo Nazionale, I was fascinated most of all by the collection of paintings from Pompeii. When I entered I was profoundly moved. The ancient paintings were in part wonderfully well preserved. And this art is very close to me at present. I had anticipated the treatment of silhouette. The decorative colours. I take all this personally. It was painted for me and dug up for me. I feel invigorated.

      Maundy Thursday (27.3) morning again at the Pompeian wall paintings. In the afternoon busy with entries in my journal, then at the German Consulate around four o’clock to ask whether I could get aboard a warship. But there’s none in the harbour. Afterwards I walked along the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele to the Posillipo without any special plan. On reaching the tunnel, I suddenly felt enterprising and went through to the other side, looked at the village called Fuorigrotta, whose entire population was in the street and stared back at me. Then I followed the perfectly straight road for three quarters of an hour, to Bagnoli. From there (pestered by a cabman who kept trailing me) along the superbly foaming sea, back toward the Posillipo (twenty minutes), and then home in two and a half hours by way of the long ridge of the Posillipo, whilst a wondrously clear night was falling. The perspectives of the nocturnal sea are a tonic for sense and soul. No other coast is so interesting. Bold islands (Nisida) and the large and lofty island of Ischia, the dangerously steep, mountainous Capo Miseno, Capo Coroglio, and Capo di Posillipo; in the distance, the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, the Phlegraean fields. Finally Naples again, now like a quiet harvest of lights at my feet. Oh, the overflowing jumble, the displacements, the bloody sun, the deep sea filled with tilted sailboats. Theme upon theme, until you could lose yourself in it. To be human, to be ancient, naive and nothing, and yet happy. It is good to be so for once, as an exception, a holiday.

      The Tree of Houses, 1918. Watercolour, gouache and India ink on chalk-primed gauze on wove papers, on cardboard, 23.4/22.1 × 18.4/18.7 cm. The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

      Plan for a Garden Architecture, 1920. Watercolour, oil and chalk on canvas on cardboard, 35.6 × 42.9 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

      Emacht, 1932. Oil on cotton canvas on frame, 50 × 64 cm. Private collection.

      Flower Myth, 1918. Watercolour on canvas with mashed chalk on newspaper on cardboard, 29 × 15.8 cm. Sprengel Museum, Hanover.

      Yesterday, to the museum for the third time, with my Burckhardt. The walk there along the broadly curving Corso, which gradually slopes downward, is very attractive. The ancient statuary, particularly the bronzes. The disclosures made to us by statuettes with their colouring partially preserved. The eyes, which one must imagine painted. Three of us (Haller, Schmoll and I) made an excursion to Tivoli. The waterfalls have been reproduced in pictures and described often enough. In the afternoon we visited the Villa d’Este and towards evening the Villa Hadriana, an absolutely heavenly corner of the earth. In the evening there were subdued and serious colour effects of a sombreness and subtlety that one would never believe possible in Italy, which is unjustly regarded as a garish land. There is a moral strength in such colour. I see it just as much as others do, I too shall be able to create it some day. When? Leaving Rome like this is not without its emotion. On the way to the Villa Hadriana we had an amusing experience. A cab caught up with us as we were walking along. The occupant, a lean, professorial German with a grey goatee, was so enamoured of his honeymoon partner next to him that he must have imagined himself alone in the world with her and the horse and the driver’s back. Right behind us he launched a barrage of faunlike kisses at the thin, rather faded lady. We made a stand, yelled like a bunch of Hurons, lined up on both sides of the road and had the frightened pair run the gauntlet. The incident kept us amused for quite some time, until the carriage was nearly out of sight. We rehashed, analysed, mimicked. “Oh, he was pleased with his morsel of flesh.” – Haller couldn’t get over it… I would hate to be caught this way between fifty and sixty.

      Rome is as melancholy as I am; it shrouds itself in dark veils and weeps with me. Anyway, I have a great deal to do and to think about, especially how I am going to pack all my things. But I shall be able to leave only when I have the money. And when the money arrives I must be ready to leave. Old Rome, with its eyes full of rain. I have already rented a room in Florence and know where to eat. I expect to meet Jean de Castella there; for some weeks he has been visiting Florentine pawn shops. A great rascal and a big child. How he mimicked the frightful ape and mauled his pretty sister! How overfed I am and insatiable, and how hungry for the novelties of Florence. The after-dinner nap in Bern. Then perhaps the dreadful awakening, the reversal of direction: instead of penetrating into myself, a going out of myself! I have already dreamed about it, and clearly.

      Yesterday (12.4.) I saw the Roman Salon, the annual exhibition in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. The only good displays are the drawings, etchings, and lithographs by the French. Above all, Rodin’s caricatures of nudes! – caricatures! – a genre unknown before him. The greatest I have seen were among them, a stupendously gifted man. Contours are drawn with a few lines of the pencil, a brush filled with watercolour contributes the flesh tone, and another dipped in a greenish colour say, may indicate clothing. That is all, СКАЧАТЬ