Collection presentation Ad Parnassum

The works currently on display afford a representative overview of Paul Klee’s development as a painter, from his early pictures and artistic experiments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to his self-discovery as a painter through his membership of the Blue Rider group, and from his tutorial activities at the Bauhaus between 1921 and 1930 and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts to his late work created in Bern between 1934 and 1940. The focus of the exhibition – its crowning glory, if you will – is the masterpiece «Ad Parnassum» (Latin for «at/to Parnassus»), dated 1932, around which the entire exhibition revolves both chronologically and thematically. The items chosen to accompany «Ad Parnassum» were selected for their importance and their capacity to represent the Zentrum Paul Klee collection – many of them are works to which Paul Klee himself gave his seal of approval by inscribing them with the designation «Sonderklasse» (special) and reserving them for his estate collection.

The exhibition includes a select group of works demonstrating the significance and development of the important «mountain» and «pyramid» motifs in Paul Klee’s art. In Greek mythology, Mount Parnassus was the home of Apollo, God of music and poetry, and of the Muses. The mountain – as an Alpine peak or, in its abstract form, as a pyramid – is a pictorial leitmotif running through Paul Klee’s oeuvre. It symbolises a desire to accomplish artistic goals, a yearning for travel and for the encounter of other cultures. «Ad Parnassum» represents the «crown jewel» amongst the «pointillist-style» paintings that Klee produced in 1931 and 1932 while discharging his professorial duties at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. The exhibition spotlights this technique, which is characterised by the application of paint using tiny brushstrokes – a method originally championed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in their late-Impressionist paintings some fifty years beforehand. Soon afterwards, though, Klee was to challenge the artistic and compositionally accomplished perfection of the masterpiece «Ad Parnassum» through a series of radically impulsive, rapidly executed sketches in which he appeared to be questioning the need to strive for mastery and excellence: in 1933 he produced a sequence of expressive drawings as a reaction to the National Socialists’ seizure of power. Klee emigrated to Bern, and in 1935 came the first signs that all was not well with his health; the debilitating illness from which he was suffering was to lead inexorably to his death in 1940. The last three years of his life saw the artist increasingly gripped by an obsession to paint: he produced in excess of 2000 works, amongst them large numbers of hastily executed drawings and numerous large paintings.

From 1925 onwards Paul Klee adopted a method of classifying his polychromatic works. Top of the list came his «Sonderklasse»(special) works, which he inscribed with the abbreviation SCL or SKL. These were items that were not to be sold – he wanted to keep them for himself. Some 150 works dating from between 1901 and 1924 bear this special designation, though a clear majority of «Sonderklasse» pictures – around 220 – stem from his time in the Weimar Republic, during which period he was beginning to make a name for himself in the art market and amongst art critics and galleries as a leading exponent of modern art. He was also doing well as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and then in Dessau. Although Klee’s overall artistic output rose after 1933 until his death in 1940, he designated no more than 19 works from that period as «special». Could it be that Klee tended to denote as «special» works produced during the commercially more successful phase of his life? The more works he sold, the more he reserved for his private estate.

«Ad Parnassum», since 1935 on permanent loan to Bern’s Museum of Fine Arts, courtesy of the Friends of the Museum, is in turn on loan to the Zentrum Paul Klee for the duration of the exhibition – the first time the masterpiece has left the museum in 14 years. Elaborate testing showed that it was possible to transfer the famous yet fragile work to the nearby Zentrum Paul Klee. The delicate state of the relatively large painting is an outcome of the execution of the work: Klee was fond of experimentation – not just in terms of form and content, but of technique, too. «Ad Parnassum» saw the artist employ a combination of casein binder paints and oil paints that have become brittle with the passing years. Splits in the paint have weakened its adhesion to the base, such that vibration and fluctuations in temperature and humidity could cause irreparable damage to the work. Paul Klee himself detailed the fragile structure of the painting:

«Artist’s attestation»
a. Quadrangular structure as base; technical casein paints on an unprimed canvas
b. Subdivided into small sections using white oil paint
c. These small sections are then glazed using oil paints thinned with turpentine and a little additional painted medium
d. Oil paint for the warm disk
e. Oil paint for the line

To be able to assess the level of vibration to which the painting would be subjected on its short trip to the Zentrum Paul Klee, a real-world «dry run» was carried out using a dummy painting, during which measurements were taken and analysed. This dummy was equal in size and weight to the masterpiece and featured a comparable canvas weave of a similar tension. It also sported the original’s frame and was fitted with shatterproof safety glass and protection to the rear. It was transported in an insulated, air-conditioned crate custom-lined with shock-absorbing material. The dummy painting and the interior and exterior of the crate were fitted with sensors that recorded the temperature, humidity and levels of vibration. The crate was shipped in a special air-conditioned truck equipped with air suspension. All in all, these precautions resulted in such low levels of vibration that the go-ahead was given to convey «Ad Parnassum» from the Museum of Fine Arts to the Zentrum Paul Klee.

A richly illustrated publication documenting the art-historical and technical examinations of «Ad Parnassum» may be obtained from the Zentrum’s shop.