Document Type
Freshman Essay
Publication Date
1984
Excerpt
Paul Klee was fascinated by the art of children largely because he recognized that their creativity had not been stifled by the belief that the world was supposed to appear in any one particular way. He envied them the possession of a consciousness in which reality and imagination had not yet become contradictory. Child on the Steps represents Klee's attempt to enter the mind of the child through an intellectualizing experience. In the painting, the artist captures and synthesizes the outward situation and the emotional state of the child who has newly escaped into a vast and startling world. The pictorial world, in which so much is intriguing, frightening and puzzling, and in which the figure's spindly legs seem unable to provide adequate support, in a very real sense belongs to the child. Klee continually reminds the viewer that this world has resulted from the action of the child's imagination on the world around him through a masterful use of the means of pictorial representation.
Recommended Citation
Blair, Laura, "The Genesis of a World (1984)" (1984). The Valpo Core Reader. 296.
http://scholar.valpo.edu/core_reader/296