Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor 1923

Paul Klee’s ‘Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor’ shimmers with transparent washes of color, building up to a unified whole. I can see the hand of Klee here, building the painting’s surface with layers of feeling as much as pigment, creating an apparition that seems to float out of the canvas. There is a beautiful fragility to the image. I can imagine Klee gently coaxing it into being – each mark considered, but not belabored. I want to know what he was thinking as he applied each layer. Maybe he was thinking of the push and pull between the real and unreal, the seen and unseen? The ventriloquist seems to be conjuring a world of dreams – all the birds and flowers swirling around his body like a living aura. Like Klee, we artists are always ventriloquizing: speaking through colors, shapes, and textures. We channel our inner voices, our dreams, and our fears. We’re all in conversation, shouting into the moor, and hoping someone, somewhere, hears us.