Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia
By: Roger Benjamin with Cristina Ashjian
Contributors: Ashjian, Cristina, author
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
ISBN-13: 9780520283657
Subjects: In art; Modernism (Art); Travel; Modern Art; African influences
Description: "Paul Klee experienced his 1914 trip to Tunisia as a major breakthrough for his art: 'Color and I are one,' he famously wrote. 'I am a painter.' 'Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia' sets the scene for Klee's breakthrough with a close study of the parallel voyage undertaken in 1904-5 by Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, who would later become Klee's friends. This artist couple, then at an early stage in their celebrated careers, produced a rich body of painting and photography known only to specialists. Paul Klee's 1914 trip with August Macke and Louis Moilliet, in contrast, is a vaunted convergence of Cubism and the exotic. Roger Benjamin refigures these two seminal voyages in terms of colonial culture and politics, the fabric of ancient Tunisian cities, visual ethnography, and the tourist photograph. The book looks closely at the cities of Tunis, Sousse, Hammamet, and Kairouan to flesh out a profound confrontation between European high modernism and the wealth of Islamic lifeways and architecture. Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia offers a new understanding of how the European avant-garde was formed in dialogue with cultural difference"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "Ella" and "Wassi" : the lovers as tourists; title: Kandinsky and the ethno-decorative : working negroes; title: Hôtel Saint Georges and the terrain vague; title: Tunisian decorative art and the Belvedere Park; title: Modern Carthage, 1905; title: Carnivals and fantasias; title: Mosques and marabouts of Tunis : open space; title: Arches and alleys of Tunis : compressed space; title: Arab city : views of Sousse and Kairouan; title: Memories of the Maghreb and Arab Cemetery, 1909; title: Munich-Tunis: a bildungsreise; title: Pictures of Tunis, April 1914; title: The "European colony" of St. Germain; title: A crystalline Hammamet; title: The holy city of Kairouan; title: Sidi Sahabi and l'art populaire; title: Outside the walls of Kairouan; title: Mosque of the Sabres; title: North African resonances, 1914-1915; title: Conclusion : navigating colonial cultures.