the Paul Klee exhibition has something to say

The Equilibist, Paul Klee

We went to the Paul Klee exhibition yesterday and I can highly commend it if you are interested in Paul Klee or even if you aren't yet but might be interested after you read this!  I hadn't ever trodden across the millennium bridge or been to the Tate Modern and neither had I ever really considered the work of this painter, I thought he was too cerebral for a Granny like me.  There is a quote which appears as part of the title of the exhibition from Marcel Duchamp who said that "Art-making is making the invisible visible" and after a while of peering at pictures wondering how to make sense of them, this picture really helped me to see what was being made visible.  It is called the Equilibrist and on the surface it is a few lines and circles on a dark background, quite childlike in a way but you can see that these lines and circles aren't really childish, they have put there with great care.   So you look a bit harder or you allow the picture to look at you may suddenly see that it is full of presence and that the lines and circles are just the lightest outline of something which looks at you.  You might find that you become still and balanced and after all that trudging about you might feel rested, I did.  

(Seventh-century icon of Santa Maria Nova, Rome, 
from Sister Wendy Beckett’s Encounters with God:
In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary)

And then when I came home I looked at Sister Wendy Beckett's book Encounters with God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary and found a remarkable similarity in this picture below, a seventh century icon of the Virgin Mary and the Klee picture The Equilibrist.  It looks at you in the same way, it draws you in to the presence which is both behind it and that from which it comes.  It reminds me of the way the Equilibrist had touched me and made me think how easy it is to walk quickly past a picture or anything at all; a tree, a person or a landscape and to only see the colour and the form.  But being a Granny gives you time to stay and examine both pictures and things and as they kindly put seats in the rooms of exhibitions spaces it means you can sit down.  This is a distinct advantage of being a Granny, you can sit in exhibitions and you aren't so driven to do things, you can go slowly and wonder a bit at the things you have taken at face value and not really pondered at all.