Klee Mandala

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by Julie Rauer

June 27, 2006

This article is based on and inspired by an important exhibition of more than sixty intimate pai

Paul Klee in the Neue Galerie‟s exquisite exhibition, “Klee and America”, Neue Galerie, NewMarch 9 through May 22, 2006.

(click on the small image for full screen image with captions.)

Avatar of the cosmos, omniscient and fractured map of a lucid interior - the mandala - floating

elements, planetary eyes and mouth, that leap forwards and backwards in time as wormholes toalternate existence, infinite dimensionality projected with tripartite brush as spiritual

architecture, art, and ritual — Mandlebrot set of an inner psyche torn asunder, rocked from

equilibrium by the sound of contemplation turning over irresolvable ontological issues inside acurious mind. Five elements of relatively equal size comprising the template of a whole

universe — lunar and solar — structured around concentric circles (‘khor ) and squares sharing one

center (dkyil) which radiates spokes of enlightenment.

In explicating the essence of Paul Klee‟s 1934 painting, The One Who

Understands, a disarmingly understated oil and gypsum masterwork of

profound reflection and metaphysical distillation, it is fitting that the

Swiss artist‟s eastern connectivity, inclusiveness, and visual constructioncomfortably share scholar Martin Brauen‟s definition of a mandala,

dissected at length in his gratifyingly comprehensive volume, The

Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism. [1]

Cosmogram, sacred realm, strongly symmetrical diagram concentratedabout a center and customarily sectioned into four quadrants of equal size, catalyst for

meditation, visualization, and initiation, essential and ideal plan of a perfect universe,

“delineation of a consecrated superficies protected from invasion by disintegrating forces

symbolized in demoniacal cycle” [2], and the palace itself, home to the deities — all aremandalas —“as are the deities themselves who reside in it, assembled in a clearly ordered

pattern. (fig. 1) The term „mandala‟ can, moreover, be applied to the whole cosmos, namelywhen the entire purified universe is mentally offered in a special ritual”. [3]

Fig. 1

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Discussing the term „mandala‟, Brauen also asserts its

indication of “other structures…for example the discsof the five elements that constitute the lower part of

the Kalacakra universe, or the discs of moon, sun and

the two planets Rāhu and Kālāgni that serve as a

throne for a diety.” [4] Extrapolating to thecosmologically and spiritually diagrammatic nature of

another Klee painting, Actor’s Mask

(Schauspieler=Maske), (1924), [5] which exerts adecidedly eastern partitioning of space, one can again feel the verity of Brauen‟s words (fig. 2).This painting is one of more than sixty other intimate paintings and drawings in the Neue

Galerie‟s exquisite exhibition, “Klee and America”, displayed from March 9 through May 22,2006 in New York City. Klee's painting eschews European artistic conventions, as a work

specifically Orientalist in thematic underpinning, cultural influence, and chromatic treatment

directly comparable, albeit as marked abstraction versus ardent realism, to The Dahesh

Museum‟s resplendent José Tapiró Baró painting, A Tangerian Beauty (fig. 3).

In Klee‟s facial strata of compressed ocular and lingual tides, expansively linear cheeks and

brow, negative space captured and harvested into painful constriction, and the perpetual act of drowning in ever deepening fathoms of water while still on land, Actor’s Mask lifts this visage

out of any titular theatricality and into more intangible realms. “…we shall discover that the

human being is also seen as a mandala. For instance each of the wind channels, which accordingto Tantric conception flow inside the body, is linked to a particular direction, element, aggregate

(skandha), and color, thereby forming a mandala. In the so-called „inner mandala‟, the human

body is seen as a „cosmos mandala‟…” . [6]

Giuseppe Tucci, writing of strongly analogous threads connecting the mandala to the human

body inThe Theory and Practice of the Mandala

, which specifically investigates the modernpsychology of the subconscious in relation to Tibetan art and ritual practices, reiterates this

precise correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, comparing the human body to the

universe as a whole, not only in its “physical extent and divisions”, but further as container of all

the Gods.

Dissecting, reimagining, then reassembling the human structure, reducedto the essential elements as mandalas, Paul Klee (1879-1940) distilled

the pathos of human existence, the cyclical destruction and animation of

form, intellect and emotion strongly evident in the Neue Galerie‟sPrinted Sheet with Picture (Bilderbogen), (1937), (fig. 4) which presents

a complex diagram of an individual‟s universe, or psychic life (whichTucci asserts reflects that of the universe as the body mandala [ 7]), in a

maze of solar and lunar cycles, birth and death, deprivation and satiation,

intense scholarship and fanciful recreation, religion and secular

apparition. “On to the mandala was projected the drama of cosmic disintegration andreintegration as relived by the individual, sole contriver of his own salvation…” [8]. From the

grotesque, possibly stillborn, child to depthless matriarchal grief , haunted domesticity sectioned

into a cloven eye and arms shorn of hands that serve only as labyrinthine walls, Klee‟s painting,

Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Fig. 4












a Mind mandala of „deep awareness‟, speaks of harrowing inner life with a distinctly eastern

aesthetic.

True Orientalist from the earliest years of his artistic life, Paul

Klee profoundly altered his color palette, compositional

approach to space, graphic symbolism, and dexterousarchitectural translation of three dimensions into two; a

fundamental visual iconography that would persist andmetamorphose, perpetually reinventing itself throughout his

prolific, but tragically abbreviated career [9]. This

metamorphosis followed a 1914 trip to St. German (today EzZahra) near Tunis with friends August Macke and Louis

Moilliet. (fig.5)

After traveling to Tunisia, Klee “reworked the subject of a watercolor he had

painted…consolidating the essences of the compositional vocabulary he had developed in the

following year” [10], finding lasting clarity and the foundation of his singular, highly eclecticlexicon in North African subjects, light, decorative motifs, and architecture.

Juxtaposing Klee‟s Yellow House (Gelbes Haus), (1915) (fig. 6) with The Dahesh Museum‟s Arabesques: Assembled Wooden Compartments and Borders (1877) (fig. 7), a print by French

Egyptologist Prisse d‟Avennes, striking analogies in the hallmark Klee “X” and arrow symbols,densely crafted compartmentalization of space that would come to dominate his oeuvre, and

manipulation of color in service of form, can be readily drawn.

In discussing the complex premises from which the mandala derives, Tucci succinctly defines a

structure that perfectly describes Klee‟s landscapes and cityscapes: “It is a geometric projection

of the world reduced to an essential pattern”. [11

] While derisive observers have occasionallyattempted to marginalize Paul Klee‟s meticulously constructed works as overly decorative, they

seem to have confused pattern with ornamentation; one is a rigorous schematic exercise of

intellect, while the other is mere surface adornment.

Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9

Addressing patterns in the architecture of iconic towns as mandalas, Brauen, in a key

observation, connects the morphology of urban forms with the universe itself, positing their

fundamental structure to be a reflection of the cosmos, designed as its symbolic centers: “Thearchitecture of many towns mirrors an ever-recurring shape (gestalt) of the town, and this shape

of the town…mirrors an ever reappearing pattern, the mandala.” (fig. 8 and fig. 9) [12] In fact,

Fig. 5




























“architectural precincts with a mandala-type or cosmological structure are widespread in Asia”

[13], including: the towns of Kirtipur in the Kathmandu Valley and Leh in Ladakh; the Mingtang,the Imperial Palace of pre-Buddhist China, temple-towns of South India (the shrine of the chief

deity at the center of Tiruvanamalai). The ideal town plan of Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu

Valley “depicts a mandala with the shrine of Tripurasundari in the middle”.

Middle Eastern cities, their gardens and environs, inhabitants and trappings of exoticism — nectar

for European Orientalists —interpreted through Paul Klee‟s brilliant and intimate prism, abound

in the chronology of the painter‟s advancing experimentation: Yellow House (1915), Tunisian

Gardens (1919), City in the Intermediate Realm (1921), Gradation, Red-Green (Vermilion)

(1921), Cold City (1921) (fig. 10), Sketch in the Manner of a Carpet (1923), Tropical Garden

Plantation (1923), Princess of Arabia (1924), and Oriental Pleasure Garden (1925), Polyphonic

Architecture (1930), Arabian Song (1932) — ad infinitum.

Pointed arches, late antique Corinthian columns, and bands of foliate decoration on the Mosqueof Ahmad Ibn Tulun, the oldest and largest original mosque in Cairo, subject of Prisse

d‟Avennes‟s, Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun (fig. 11) , Arcade and Interior Windows (1877), aredually echoed in Paul Klee‟s Gradation, Red-Green (Vermilion) (1921) (fig. 12), whichpreserves the distinctive character of Egyptian architecture through surreal, but expertly

controlled abstraction, a palace mandala of allegorical structure.

Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12

“A mandala-like structure and a plan representing the world are shown, for example,” statesBrauen, “by the cities of Jerusalem, Rome, Gur, the capital of the Sassanids, Baghdad, thecapital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and Ecbatana, the first capital of the Indo-European Medes, in

the center of which, on the testimony of Herodotus, stood the royal palace, behind seven circular

walls, each of a different color.” [14]

Klee‟s mandalas, both his kaleidoscopic middle eastern cities of iconic character and timelesshistorical presence in the psyche of mortal thinkers and builders, and his graphically arresting

portraits of interior landscapes made manifest, curl through the waking and dreaming minds of

those who see rather than simply observe, uncoiling with the sinuous architectural grace of thehuman body and the eternal philosophical searching of the human mind.

Julie Rauer © April 19, 2006












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NOTES:

1. This painting is in the Metropolitan Museum New York, and can be see at:http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/recent_acquisitions/1999/co_rec_t_century_1999.3

2. G. Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, translated by A.H. Brodrick, (Samuel W

York, 1969), p.23.

3. M. Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, (Serindia Publications, Lond

4. M. Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, (Serindia Publications, Londo

5. Recently exhibited with more than sixty other intimate paintings and drawings in the Neue

exhibition, “Klee and America”, Neue Galerie, New York NY, from March 9 through May 22,

6. M. Brauen, The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism, (Serindia Publications, Londo


York, 1969), p.109.


York, 1969), p.108.

9. Klee died, painfully, at age 61 of the rare skin hardening disease, Scleroderma

10. J. Helfenstein and E.H. Turner, Klee and America, (Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany, 2006), p

11. G. Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, translated by A.H. Brodrick, (SamuelYork, 1969), p.25.




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