Tragic Representation: Paul Klee on Tragedy and Art

Abstract

This paper traces and examines the different connotations given to the notion of "tragedy" in Paul Klee's thought. From his early reflections on, Klee relates this notion to an intermediate and conflictive condition that characterizes human existence-an existence that takes place between heaven and earth, hetween the ethereal and the earthly. This essay focuses on how the connotations Klee gives to tragedy in different moments of his reflections transform the way he conceives the work of art. Hence, I will attempt to show how Klee's reflections relate the tragedy of human existence not only to the figure of the artist, understood as a tragic figure, but also to an idea of tragedy that the work produces and represents in its own particular way of coming into being. Thus, this paper poses a new approach to Klee's suggestive proposal on modern art as well as to the meaning given to pictorial representation throughout his thought and artworks.

Paul Klee (1879–1940) as a tragic figure: What the artist learned from his illness

“…Victor Eisenmenger (Figure 1) was born in Vienna on 29 January 1864, the son of August Eisenmenger (1830-1907), an accomplished Austrian painter of portraits and historical subjects and a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, and his wife Emma, born Singer von Wyszogurska (1841-1907). 6 Victor died almost 69 years later on 11 December 1932, 7,8 apparently from stomach cancer, 9 and was buried in…”

“…Since any concrete representation of a transcendent vision is bound to fall short of what it attempts to depict, the artist's life is inherently tragic and the art work itself is an embodiment of tragedy. 6 With this theory, romantic in essence but according to Klee a ''cool Romanticism . .…”