The Monarchist 1904

Paul Klee made this etching, The Monarchist, at the beginning of the twentieth century. It seems that Klee is thinking through the activity of mark making here: the tiny dots and marks create texture, volume, and a kind of strange, atmospheric depth. I can almost imagine him poised over the plate, carefully building up the image with thousands of tiny movements. The figure is strange and otherworldly, almost like a character in a dream, caught in a moment of reflection or transformation, perhaps searching for his crown. I wonder if Klee was thinking about Goya or Ensor, other masters of the etching, when he made this piece. The history of art is really a conversation between artists, each responding to and building upon the ideas of those who came before. Ultimately, what strikes me most is its sense of searching and becoming, embodying a kind of visual thinking that invites us to project our own ideas and feelings onto its ambiguous forms.