Chinese porcelain 1940

Paul Klee made this small, jewel-like watercolor painting, ‘Chinese porcelain’ with watercolor and ink on paper. I can imagine him hunched over a table, making tiny marks, tilting the paper this way and that, coaxing the colors to blend and bleed. It’s almost like he’s creating a little world. The colors – blues, greens, browns – are muted, like looking through a misty window. The strokes are quick and light, crisscrossing and overlapping, creating layers of transparency and depth. I feel for Klee here, wrestling with the push and pull of control and chance. There is a balance between intention and accident, like a dance. The dark horizontal line cuts across the composition and is a bold move, anchoring the dreamy atmosphere. Like all artists, Klee was in conversation with others. Maybe he looked at Chinese landscape paintings, or maybe he just imagined some far off scene that had a slightly oriental feel. I love how painting lets us embrace the vague, to make something without having to name it.