Motif from Hammamet 1914

Paul Klee made this watercolor, "Motif from Hammamet," with the kind of playful precision that makes you think artmaking is just another form of thinking. Look closely, and you'll see how the whole thing is made up of little patches of color. The texture is everything – like a quilt where each square holds a different feeling, a different weight. Some are watery and thin, others dense and opaque, almost like little stained-glass windows. Take the area with the blue squiggles on a white ground. It’s just a tiny detail, but it brings everything else into focus. Those squiggles are like Klee’s signature, a reminder that even in the most abstract compositions, there’s a human hand, a human mind, at work. You see Klee’s process, his way of building up an image through layers and layers of decisions. Klee reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin. Both artists use repetition and subtle variation to create works that are meditative and deeply personal. But unlike Martin, Klee never lets go of the quirky, the whimsical. He reminds us that art is a conversation, a constant exchange of ideas, a space where nothing is ever really finished, or completely known.