I read his a ‘pedagogical sketchbook’ when I was a student. Quirky, difficult to de-code, but sometimes illuminating. His art works are similar: quirky and tough-going. He is one of the few artists who has gained a reputation on small works.
This is a wonderful notebook. It shows someone in love with his practice. But interestingly, he was not a popular teacher. Students found him too intense, and difficult to comprehend.
You can't appreciate Klee without seeing his works in the flesh. I can't think of another painter who used color so masterly and, sadly, this is still something that does not survive in reproductions (I've seen).
> You can't appreciate Klee without seeing his works in the flesh
I don't think you can appreciate many of the works of the masters without seeing them in person. I still remember the visceral feeling I had when I first saw a Van Gogh in person at the Norton Simon Museum 20 years ago. Seeing art in a book, even a nice book with big pictures, just isn't the same. I'm not 'into' art, but seeing it in person was the first time I ever understood how a person could be.
Jackson Pollock is a good example too. His paintings have a mesmerizing quality to them if seen in person, especially because they tend to be huge. Viewing them on a computer screen doesn’t quite have the same effect.
I agree that the sad state of color (in particular) reproduction (lemon market?) greatly diminishes our art enjoyment in general.
And I encourage anyone to take an exhibition catalogue to an exhibition of old masters and compare the colors and range, at least once. Carravaggios are a good example, due to the Chiaroscuro.
But I can still appreciate Hokusai, Rembrandt, Carravagio or Vermeer in reproduction (van Gogh leaves me a bit cold, one way or other), although they all suffer. But with Klee, I was really blown away by the fact that it was, to me, a binary difference: when I first saw a major exhibition of his works, I was in awe, felt profoundly saddened when I had to leave, hours earlier than I wished, and to this day regret the fact that I had no chance to revisit the exhibition a second time. But I was previously completely indifferent to him, and a quick Google Image Search suggests, probably still would be, if I had not seen the originals.
I must say that this is something that makes me both sad and angry; most people will never have a chance to experience even a small fraction of great art adequately, although we now have extremely sophisticated display technology universally and comparatively cheaply available and surely even in print it must be possible to do much better at some non-insane price-point than e.g. a Taschen volume.
In addition to an undue reverence for originals, I suspect a mix of lemon market and anti-social behaviour on the part of museums and collectors is to blame for this (they have a vested interested in reproductions being low quality or completely unavailable, and many publicly funded museums behave outrageously about this).
If anyone knows more about the causes for the poor state of art reproduction or good sources of high quality digital reproductions, I'd love to hear, BTW!
The best source currently is Google Art and Culture. Super high resolution photos. Their camera rig (the so called art camera) is something else. In some respect, one can learn more from these photos than from the real thing. Certainly, they allow you to get closer to the work than museum guards do.
It's the volume of works in a collection that makes viewing an artist's work worth the effort. The odd master solo work may be impressive but seeing work as it evolves over time is the main reason I visit galleries when a grand artist is exhibiting.
Ives Klein is famous for his work on the actual material of painting. He even invented a new blue pigment. Looking at this—a complete canvas in solid blue—is indeed fascinating. And looks silly on a photo because the color cannot be reproduced...
...which makes it even sillier that they sell prints, using off-the-shelf colors, in the museum’s shop you have to go through on your way out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_Reason_(Paul_Klee)