Paul Klee. The revolving house

Paul Klee's revolving house

“Modern” artists have always been fascinated by children.

By modern we mean those of the early twentieth century like Picasso, who said that at twelve he painted like Raphael (everyone deludes himself as he can) and that he then spent a lifetime painting like a child.

In fact, these considerations are a myth. Children work differently.

Let's take a 4 or 5 year old child and let him look at a painting, for example Paul Klee's revolving house.

He will look at it carefully and will be delighted by the colors, shapes and possibilities that this painting offers him.

A few years, two or three are enough, and the same child will definitely reject a similar painting: “No! Houses don't look like that, it's all out of place, it's a mess ”.

It will not be very different from the judgment of many adults, who have this idea of abstract art.

What has changed in such a short time and what can help us understand a work by Klee?

Children learn the principles of "non-contradiction".

For a younger child, for example, a marker is not just a marker; he can put it in his mouth and it becomes a bottle or, well gripped, a weapon of offense and if he stains his hands ... marvel! "My hands change color ... but are they still mine?"

It is a typical trait of madness, in which children inevitably find themselves.

Later, you learn that the marker is a marker and nothing else. By dint of "no" and "no", spread loudly by mothers, one gradually acquires reason and learns to attribute the univocal meaning of things.

Without having to go back to madness we can, however, following a possibility that Paul Klee offers us, amaze and enjoy the beauty of multiple meanings.

Let's try the revolving house.

We can visit the house from all sides without moving, because Paul told us it is revolving… it is she who moves.

At the center is the house, with its sloping roof: this is how houses are in our minds.

The colors are warm because it's warm in my house.

Mine is also a bright house and a beautiful white light enters through the windows. I have several types of windows, even a nice large window with a round top.

To get there, you pass through a driveway and there is also a stairway.

Every self-respecting house has its own tree nearby.

All around, the color darkens, and you can't see it well, also because I don't care. What matters is my house, which is also revolving.

Paul Klee did not want to paint like children, he was very slow and meticulous, precise almost to excess, but he painted giving the signs the possibility of being one thing, but also something else. Having a meaning, but also what we must go and discover within us, using the eyes of feeling as well as those of rationality.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini