On the symbolism in Paul Klee’s Painting ‘Um den Fisch’

Leonardo, Vol. 9, pp. 295-297 Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in .Great Britain ON THE SYMBOLISM IN PAUL KLEE’S PAINTING ‘UM DEN FISCH’ Naomi Boretz* Paul Klee has eluded convenient categorization; generally, after mentioning his teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany,his writingsand travels, most students of his work conclude that he was a ‘fantasist’and that a content analysisof his painting would not necessarily be revelatory. However, a close study of his Pedagogical Sketchbook [l] and his other writings [2] reveals that he was not disposed to the intellectual dreaminess often attributed to him, but that from his earliest years he responded to the world around him. I find that he was ‘practical’ in his approach to his work. For example,he says: ‘Creative art never begins with a poetic word or an idea but with the building of one or more figures, the harmonization of a few colours and tonalities . . .’ ‘. ..clear structure. . .gives me more than any high-flown theoretical graphs; the typical will come automaticallyfrom a series of examples.’ ‘Theoryis a devicefor achievingclarity’ It would take a long time for one to analyze each of the almost 10,000 works that Klee produced. Each was ‘individual’and ‘original’, not only within the context of the work being done by other artists between 1915and 1940,but even within the context of his own work. It is not sufficientto give his output a sweepingglance, observing his ‘use of color’ and/or his elegant quality of line. Many of the paintings and drawings combine a complex interrelation of compositional structure with a subtle, though (not really) ‘hidden’ iconography, which is not a world only of the so called ‘subconscious ’ mind of an artist, but is a very real world of accepted iconographic symbols. It is my contention here that a painting such as ‘Um den Fisch‘ (Fig. l), while based on Klee’s interst in fish shapes and their elemental structure [4], is at the same time an example of his incorporation of these accepted symbols into the ‘structure’ of the work. In 1926,Klee visited Italy and was much affected by the Byzantine and medieval art that he saw on his travels. ‘The Last Supper’mosaic (Fig. 2) in the Church of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna is ~31. * Artist living at 64 Wiggins Street, Princeton, NJ 08540, U.S.A. (Received 25 Jan. 1976.) an unusual representation of this scene, with the ‘double-fish’image in the center, ringed by Christ and apostles, and may have been the compositional prototype on which Klee based his painting [5]. His title, ‘Around the Fish’, might bring to a viewer’s mind one of two associative ideas about the picture’s ‘subject’[6]: It might be a depictionof a fish on a table for an ordinary meal with other dinner-table objects, such as dishes, silverware, glassware, and fruit; or, it might be a depiction of a fish in the sea, in which case it would be associated with water symbols such as undersea foliage, shipshapes , etc. Instead, there are representations of several objects associated with Christian symbolism [7]. A fish was used as a symbol by the early Christians (thoughthe doublefish is unusual). The Latin cross refers to Christ’s crucifixion; the Sun and crescent Moon are meant to implythe sorrow of all Creation at Christ’s death; the scythe is a symbol of death; the branchesof the willow tree representthe written gospel of Christ; the banner (labarum) symbolizes the victory over death by the martyrdom of Christ. On both sides of the fish are circular transparent ‘vases’ with flower stems; such a vase is called a monstrance: it is a transparent container in which the consecrated Host (bread or wafers) is viewed. The round pyx (Eucharistic vessel) at bottom, left, has a cover on which are depicted the five drops of blood of the crucified Christ, The die with one spot to the right of the pyx represents the lots cast for Christ’s robe by those who carried out the crucifixion. The severed head may be meant to representJudas, who, with a nimbus of (betrayal) coins surroundinghis head, was often thus depicted. And the three-sided within...