I promised to provide you with a steady diet of Klee's work, not out of altruism but for entirely selfish reasons, I love them - and 'love' is a word I try not to use too often. I have a particular fondness for this one, The Drummer Boy, because I used it as the motif for my posters and programme when I directed Troilus and Cressida. Of all Shakespeare's plays, T&C is the most extraordinary, it defies definition as poor old Heminges and Condell found out in 1623 when they assembled Will's plays to form the First Folio and were unable to classify T&C as History, Comedy, Tragedy - or what? The play is one long, sustained howl of rage at Man's stupidity in love and war.
In the late '30s, and prior to his death in 1940, Klee's work changed. War was coming, as was his own slow and extremely painful death. The delicate line drawing which features in his earlier works was superceded by heavy, threatening black slashes of paint. Similarly, the immensely sophisticated, sometimes intricate, balance of colours which he had spent a lifetime developing gave way to vivid, almost careless, splashes of blood red. The eye watches, and dominates. The energy of the drummer boy's arms is provoking rather than joyful. You can compare that picture with this:
A beautiful, warm exercise in shape and colour and composition, called Castle and Sun. This is a new picture to me but I suspect it comes from, or was influenced by, his time spent in North Africa in which he reveled in the quality of light and the subtlety of colour in the buildings. I could look at that for ever!
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