Curriculum Materials: Amazing Animals in
Art
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Image 5 Paul Klee Essays: Questions: |
Howling Dog
In this painting, Klee uses line sparingly to delineate the image of a dog crouching on its haunches, baying at an orange moon. Although this could be perceived as an ABSTRACT image, or indeed, as a scrawled doodle, the title Howling Dog plays an integral part in the viewer's perception and helps one decipher the image. The ambiguous shape emerging to the left of the dogówith its playful flow and movementóevokes the sound of a dog's prolonged howl. Or perhaps it suggests another animal and the communication between two animals that a howl might signify. The artist creates a joyful mood with his use of lineóthin and caricaturelike, rhythmic in its movement and repetition, and clearly articulated against the haziness of the background. Rendered as nearly continuous, the line has an improvisational character, dancing across the canvas, curving slowly at times, or skipping quickly back and forth across itself. The viewer shares in the artist's creative process by following the movement of the line traveling through space.
The line composes puzzlelike forms that appear ORGANIC and seem to float on a diffuse ground with no specific reference to location. The swirling background is composed of soft, dreamy colorsópatches of green, violet, and orange framed by a loose border of grayóand creates an ambiguous space that evokes a sense of mystery.
Klee described his works as "taking a line for a walk." He viewed a line as a point wandering through space and allowed his hand to follow its own impulse. Insisting that the process is more important than the finished product, Klee often began his works with no definite goal in mind, and he let the line, color, or medium dictate its own evolution. Sometimes specific images emerged, like the howling dog and the moon. After he completed the work, he would title it.
Though Klee saw the process of creation as an intuitive act arising from the individual spirit of the artist, he recognized that it is also guided by the artist's reason, imagination, and experiences. All these factors resonate in Howling Dog. While the lines may appear simple, spontaneous, and freely wandering, they are in fact controlled by the artist's deft hand and intellect, his witty imagination, and his lifelong experience drawing and observing animals in the natural world. Klee captures the dog's essence, conveying its tension and energy as well as its fundamental character as part of nature. Unlike A "Bear" Chance, where Goodwin shows the influence of civilization and the domestication of the wild, Klee's painting does not allude to any human presence. This dog is not a family pet or a human's companion but, rather, an animal revealing its basic instinctive existence, communicating with the moon and perhaps with other animals.
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