The rumors 1939

Editor: Paul Klee's watercolor work from 1939, "The Rumors", has this playful quality to it. It feels almost like looking through a kaleidoscope, a collection of geometric shapes mingling in washes of colour. What's your interpretation of it? Curator: Kaleidoscope, precisely! Though for me, looking at this, I see more of an echo. Each shape seems to vibrate against its neighbor, almost gossiping... the way light flickers in a crowded room. Perhaps a room filled with hushed tones and sideways glances, a feeling I sometimes get from Klee's late work. He made this in '39, didn't he? Editor: He did. Is that significant to how you see it? Curator: I think it’s hard to ignore the historical context, brewing on the eve of WWII. This fractured, uncertain world creeping into his visual language... I wonder, do you feel a tension beneath the whimsical colours? Editor: That’s not wrong. Looking closer, that almost childlike palette seems…anxious somehow. The colours feel like they're barely held together. Curator: Exactly! He was ousted from his teaching position because of the Nazi regime and his work was labelled as "degenerate." Makes you wonder what kind of rumours were swirling around him then, right? It seeps into the art, doesn't it? Even into these deceivingly simple watercolor strokes. Editor: Absolutely, especially after considering the historical background. I came expecting whimsy but I see… fragility and veiled tension instead. Curator: That's the thing about whispers, they have such sharp edges and echo into everything!