Category: Working Notes

Side Notes on Paul Klee’s In the Style of Kairouan

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Looking at a 1914 watercolor and pencil painting by Paul Klee. It’s called In the Style of Kairouan, and it is considered Klee’s first abstract work.

Something about the work makes me feel like I’m reading someone’s diary — in this case, Klee’s diary. It is a profoundly personal journal entry written in a language that only sounds familiar but isn’t. I cannot see this painting from the other side. I cannot see it through Klee’s eyes, using his mind to decrypt the work, and this keeps me from understanding the thing in itself but it’s fine because it is an opportunity to drift freely and enjoy a moment of meaning creation. At first, I explore the surface of the work intensely. I actively form interpretations in my mind, and then I let go and get lost in it like a log in the middle of the sea.

There is a simplicity in the painting that almost makes me uncomfortable. Rectangles/quadrilaterals of different colors and sizes fill the space. There’s no room to breathe. Then, unpretentious circles come to turn the collage of rectangles into… art.

Most of the rectangles/quadrilaterals stand vertically, except a few. The circles live inside the horizontal ones, but not all horizontal rectangles/quadrilaterals have circles in them. The left side of the painting is conquered by the spirit of red; the right side by the spirit of green.

Could it be that Klee’s unconscious did most of the work?

I’d like to believe it’s a moment of boredom that served as the fertile soil for this piece.

Although there’s nothing to see here, there’s a lot to stay for.

Moments with Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring

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The workday is over, and I’m looking at a picture of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring on my laptop. In that frozen moment, is the girl inhaling or exhaling? That is the big question, the one I keep asking. If she’s breathing in, then someone could be closing in on her, coming for her. If she’s breathing out, i.e., sighing, then someone could be moving away from her, leaving her behind, and she has turned to have one last look at him. There’s melancholy in her eyes. The person she’s looking at is likely a man she has feelings for… but not necessarily romantic or sexual. The man could be her lover, but also her father, brother, or close friend. Inferring from where the light is coming from, her past seems to have been bright. Her future, however, seems dark or yet undefined.

I imagine her removing the turban she’s wearing, allowing her hair to fall on her shoulders. She’s blonde, and her hair is long and soft like satin. The rays of the sun and her hair are sisters. I make her wear the turban again, so that the painting isn’t ruined. But then I take off the pearl earring from her ear to inspect it, and I find that it isn’t a pearl earring at all. It’s an incredibly light, shiny, silver sphere, but I don’t know what it’s made of. I give the earring back to her, and she puts it on again so that the painting isn’t ruined.

I take a step back, and I look at the picture of the painting again. The girl with the pearl earring is captivated by something… probably by the painter himself.

Notes on Plato’s Laws: Similarities Between Cleinias and Hobbes

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In Plato’s Laws, the Athenian asks Cleinias (who represents Crete) why their law ordains that they should have “common meals and gymnastic exercises, and wear arms.” Cleinias says that “all these regulations have been made with a view to war.” The legislator (must have) believed that “all men are always at war with one another.” And “for what men in general term peace would be said by him to be only a name; in reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other, not indeed proclaimed by heralds, but everlasting.”

This answer reminds me of Thomas Hobbes, who, in Leviathan, writes:

There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. For WARRE, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

Hobbes and Plato’s character Cleinias seem to agree that war exists naturally between people and that the state of war is the natural state even when there’s no fighting going on. It looks like the main thing they don’t align on is the definition of peace. For Cleinias, there isn’t real peace because the underlying condition is always war. So, peace is only a name. It is like a bedsheet covering a dirty mattress. For Hobbes, peace can exist when there’s a power that enforces it.

References:

Plato. Laws. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Apple Books, 2008.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Apple Books, 1679.