Page 67 - Studio International - November 1973

Swedenborg - always referred to but evidently stained glass designed by Burne-Jones together
seldom encountered at first hand - Mallarmé, with its original locations.
Verlaine and Poe all provide plenty of related If Symbolism has the qualities of fantasy, of
fodder for the imagination investigated by the drugged dreaming, Jones clearly identified -
author. Nevertheless, as a visual source the among many pictures about sleep - with Arthur
influence of Burne-Jones in his capacity as neo- asleep in Avalon. But as an escape story his
or second-generation Pre-Raphaelite, and of the attempt to abandon life for art is summed up
English Aesthetic movement in general, is not more neatly than anywhere else by a cartoon of
to be underestimated. his own, drawn for a child in 1883. It shows him
However, Burne-Jones, though perfectly well in despair, trying to climb into one of his own
aware of the comparable aims of, for example, half-painted Briar Rose canvases, and landing
Puvis, hardly saw himself in the context of the uncomfortably on the floor on the other side. q
salons de la Rose + Croix. His work, in the CHRISTOPHER NEVE
English section of the Universal Exhibition in
Paris in the 70s and subsequently at the Salon,
caused a sensation. Love Among the Ruins and The nature of Klee
Merlin and Vivien were like nothing that was Paid Klee Notebooks Volume 2: The nature of
being produced in Paris when they were shown nature edited by Jürg Spiller. 8o +454 pp with
there in 1878, and their influence was evidently 243 illustrations, 15 in colour. Lund
far more powerful and lasting than that of other Humphries. £12.
more apparently appropriate London artists
like Rossetti and (one would have thought an Klee's journal, 1901 : 'Satirical opus: The
absolute gift for Symbolism) Holman Hunt. happy man is half an idiot for whom all things
There is in the Harrison/Waters book a telling flourish and bear fruit. He stands on his little
description by Ferdinand Khnopff of King estate, one hand holding a watering-can, the
Cophetua, as well as Burne-Jones's remarks to other pointing to himself as the navel of the
Watts after he had received a letter from world. Things sprout and blossom. Boughs
Peladan inviting him to exhibit in Paris : 'So heavy with fruit bend towards him'. The words
silly a piece of mouthing', Jones said, 'I was were a description of, or an idea for, a picture. A
ashamed of it'. The distinction is partly between self-portrait ?
how Jones saw himself and how the symbolists Once again we confront a volume of his
saw him, but it is also between their frequent Bauhaus lecture notes; the second volume,
explicitness and hysteria and his comparative translated (in German it came out three years
refinement and calm. Nevertheless, I think a ago). There are hints in it of more to come. A
better case can be made for his work in relation third volume; a fourth; perhaps more yet. Much
to this and the Aesthetic movement than to Pre- of the space, as in the first, is taken up by
Raphaelitism. One chief virtue of the Burne- illustrations of didactic drawings Klee prepared
Jones book is the way in which intelligent and for his classes, and also of paintings and
original picture research, especially among the drawings out of the 10,000 or so he produced,
drawings and designs, succeeds in showing him selected by the editor to enrich and to ease the
as a more diverse artist than most people might often portentous text. It doesn't take long to
expect, but he still retains very little of the get through.
tension and drive of the PRB of the 5os. An But what does it all mean ? Christof Hertel
uncharitable view (and not at all a new one) wrote about Klee's lectures in an issue of the
would be that he begins as an imitator of Bauhauszeitschrift dedicated to Klee and
Rossetti, succeeds in freeing himself of his published not long after his departure from the
influence in 1862-63, and from then on repeats Bauhaus: 'Klee's theory of form . . . is as
himself with an air of drowsy self-assurance, complex and endless as life itself. It is the
almost inertia. product of a rich creative life. Like a conjurer,
This is a fuller and more carefully researched using glance, word and gesture - all three means
study than has been attempted before, but it of expression being allowed to work with equal
does not convince me of Burne-Jones's struggle intensity - he converted for us the unreal into
or the 'long and painfully sought' technical the real, the irrational into the rational. Things
development to which the authors refer. They which could have existence only through
are obviously entitled to their opinion, but sensation suddenly became graphically
they make some extravagant claims for the artist definable'.
in 'the mainstream of European cultural That is exactly it, but in the absence of Klee,
development' and as a pointer to total abstraction confronting only the word, we are likely to get
which I think, even in the context of the the balance wrong. Klee interpreters talk as if
drastically revised and enthusiastic view of the Klee's expositions of natural order, of the
period of which both these books are a part, are structure of plant growth, of the rhythmic
misguided. However, there is much that is new motion of water, sound or blood, of active,
and of interest, including some of Georgiana medial and passive aspects of nature, or of the
Burne-Jones's biography of her husband which functional composition of the human body (to
a recent writer on the Pre-Raphaelites name some of the themes he tackles in this
mentioned as being almost totally volume) - as if his sweeping words and
unilluminating, and a very useful list of the sometimes footling diagrams on these things
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