The place of the twins 1929

Paul Klee made *The place of the twins*, with a reductive palette of pink, grey, and white. Imagine Klee, carefully applying thin layers, one over the other, building up this ethereal scene. It’s like he’s trying to capture a fleeting moment, a dream perhaps, or a memory half-recalled. I see two main forms, maybe those are the twins? And are they rising out of the water, or descending? I get the sense that Klee is exploring the boundary between abstraction and representation, giving us just enough information to spark our imagination, but leaving plenty of room for interpretation. Klee, like all artists, was in conversation with the painters that came before him, as well as his contemporaries. I wonder if he was looking at early Renaissance painting? I think this is a painting which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, inviting us to bring our own experiences and associations to the act of seeing.