weimar republic germanyconcept:era modern
Around the Fish
Oil and tempera on board by Paul Klee (1926), from his Bauhaus Dessau period. A fish on a platter is surrounded by an enigmatic array of symbols — crescent moon, cross, red dot, exclamation mark, and other signs — that resist fixed interpretation. MoMA, New York.
Scholarly Significance
Klee's layered symbolic work from his Bauhaus Dessau period; anchor for Klee node and Bauhaus artwork cluster; rich Panofsky iconography target.
Notes
- ·Painted at the Bauhaus, Dessau, during Klee's most productive Bauhaus years (1925–1931).
- ·The combination of fish-on-platter with autonomous floating symbols is without direct precedent in Western iconography.
- ·Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook (Bauhaus Book 2, 1925) provides theoretical framework for his sign-work.
- ·MoMA purchased the work in 1940, the year Klee died — it became one of the museum's most reproduced holdings.
- ·Klee refused fixed symbolic readings of his work, saying the viewer brings their own associations.