Temple Gardens 1920

Paul Klee made "Temple Gardens" as an oil transfer drawing, and it's like a little world of color and shape. The way Klee uses color here is so thoughtful, almost like he's building blocks to create depth, a sense of space and feeling. Look at the way he layers orange and red, and how that makes the colors hum. The paint itself seems pretty thin, almost transparent in places, which lets the colors mix in your eye. There's this one spot, this arch of blues and oranges that sings, it is both a structural element and something totally ethereal. Klee’s work reminds me a little of Kandinsky, but where Kandinsky is all about the big gesture, Klee is more like a whisper. It feels like he's inviting us to wander through a dream. And that, to me, is what art is all about: a conversation that never really ends, full of questions and possibilities.