Small World 1914

Paul Klee made this etching, "Small World," in 1914, and it’s like peering into a dream, or maybe a dense page from a very strange comic book. Look at how Klee uses line and texture – it’s all scratches and scribbles, a real sense of digging into the plate. The materiality is key; it’s not just an image, it’s about the physicality of the process. Those etched lines create tiny universes of texture, like miniature landscapes. Notice that face near the bottom – it's kind of grinning, kind of menacing, and made up of the same frantic lines as everything else. That face becomes a part of the world. Klee’s work here reminds me a bit of Guston's later prints, that shared interest in using crude marks to conjure up a whole world of feeling. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that art isn’t about answers; it's about opening up spaces for seeing and feeling.