Moving freely, passing the time: Paul Klee and imaginary walks
Walking and drawing are two things we can do to allow us to ignore our screens for a while, to escape from the news, or to enjoy the cathartic qualities of clearing the mind. Whilst both activities share certain benefits they are clearly very different in their actions and physical requirements. Are there ways in which the actions of the two can be joined psychologically? Can the process of making a drawing ever deliver the sensation of walking, without having to leave the house? To what extent can you take your mind for a wander on the page?
Popularly known for the phrase ‘taking a line for a walk’, artist and Bauhaus teacher Paul Klee describes the first category of line within his Pedagogical Sketchbook of 1925 as:
An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk’s sake. The mobility agent is a point, shifting its position forward.
Klee’s allegorical exploration of drawing theory is one deeply rooted within nature — of which humans are very much part of, rather than competing with. His understanding of both making and receiving drawings is built through relations to natural forms and animal instincts.
Robert Hughes notes that Klee’s view of the world was one of a model, ‘a kind of orrery’ (Hughes, 304), but one that had no universal truth or reality, so could be invoked through the most free, primitive, and child-like responses — as close to the parallels of nature as possible.
For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space.
- Paul Klee, 1923
This communication with nature is met by Klee in his Pedagogical Sketchbooks with observations from biology, and theories of metaphysics. Perhaps one universal aspect of our 21st Century lives that can always be intrinsically and undeniably linked back to nature, is the continual and relentless passing of time.
Drawings are things that are completed over and within a certain window of time — but on the receiving end, do we ‘see’ with the same perceptual experience of time that we draw? Klee proposes that works of art such as drawings and sculptures are ‘time-bound’ in both their creation and reception, because both activities are governed by the limitations of the human body.
The work grows “stone upon stone” (additive) or The block is hewn “chip from chip” (subtractive) Both processes, building and reducing, are time bound… The work as human action (genesis) is productive as well as receptive. It is continuity… Productively it is limited by the manual limitation of the creator (who only has two hands.)
Receptively it is limited by the limitations of the perceiving eye. The limitation of the eye is its inability to see even a small surface equally sharp at all points. The eye must “graze” over the surface, grasping sharply portion after portion, to convey them, to the brain which collects and stores the impressions. The eye travels along the paths cut out for it in the work.
- Paul Klee in Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1925
I think the concept of the eye travelling along the paths cut out for it in the work is fascinating. The idea that we can see paths and journeys to explore through an image, as though we were physically travelling through it, is an entrancing and rewarding way in which to observe a drawing. I also think that there’s a piece in the puzzle missing here, and that something should be said for encountering first impressions of an image. When a person making a drawing first approaches it, they are usually met with a blank page and a set of thoughts: the artist starts with nothing but with unlimited possibilities, but when the receiver first approaches a drawing, they are met with an all-at-once-ness: a first impression.
Before grazing across sections and details, the single totality of the work confronts the senses, just as a map might do before going on a walk; whereas to make the drawing, is to make the map. Making a drawing is a series of actions — forming and accumulating routes and journeys of mark-making across the plane, yet viewing a drawing is a series of comprehensions — starting always with the entire thing, all-at-once, then working across, through, and within it, in order to comprehend it. The act of making a drawing is a completely different thing to looking at one, but perhaps both provide different sensations that can relate to walking. In an earlier piece, Lines made by walking, I started to explore the notion of purposeful walking to reach a destination, in contrast to purposeless walking for its own sake — both are validly useful, but for different ends. What Klee hints towards is that both artist and viewer can be taken on a walk through drawing — both are time-bound, but perhaps perceived and experienced differently.
I believe there is something ultimately more powerful about making a drawing rather than viewing one — to carve out your own path, create your own routes, and discover your own destinations. And I believe anybody can do it.
A drawing can be loosely described as making marks upon a surface. If you’ve ever doodled on the back of an envelope whilst on the phone, or graffitied on a school book, then you’ve made a thing that can validly be called a drawing. I think that anybody can make a drawing to some extent and everybody has the ability to gain the cathartic and transcendental benefits of drawing, whether they believe they can do it or not. At times, we can all be so shackled with personal disbeliefs and notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that we can so strongly believe in what we can’t do instead of looking at things more primitively, perhaps naively, and finding ways in which we can do them, through simply starting.
A drawing does not have to be what you might consider a masterpiece for it to contain the ability to deliver some of the benefits of walking.
Both drawings and walks are started with a single, simple action. This initial action informs the next, and before you know it you’re on your way to potentially endless explorations and active journeys. Beginning a drawing can be a freely moving exploration towards nothing in particular, and it can also be the start of a pattern, model, structure, or destination.
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Drawings and walks can be either purposeful to reach a certain end, or purposeless for their own sake. If you set out with the intention of being led on an imaginary walk through moving the pencil across the paper, you can transcend lineal time and delve into the world of the imagination and memory — where space and time exist on a whole different plane.
How is time experienced within drawings by Paul Klee? For me, time within Klee’s drawings can be experienced pedagogically — as a set of instructions, where you too can take a line for a walk — moving freely without a goal.
References
Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1925 (translated in 1953) — the second of fourteen BAUHAUS BOOKS edited by Walter Gropius and L.Moholy-Nagy.
Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, London, 1991
