About a motif from Hammamet 1914

Paul Klee made this dreamy painting, *About a Motif from Hammamet,* in 1914 with oil on paper. Look at these jewel-like colors, the deep blues and purples, the way he's built up these rectangles of pigment almost like tiles. You can see the hand of the artist here, the push and pull of the brush. It’s not just a picture of a place but a record of Klee's thinking while in that place. I feel like Klee, here, is in conversation with so many other painters. You could imagine him looking at Byzantine mosaics, or maybe even he was thinking about the grid paintings of Agnes Martin. This piece speaks to the idea that, as painters, we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, borrowing and riffing off each other, building this wild, beautiful, ongoing conversation that we call painting.