Calligraphy as an Artistic Style

Mark Tobey, After the Imprint, 1961. Gouache on illustration board, 39 1/4 x 27 3/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1962 © 2015 Mark Tobey / Seattle Art Museum, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Tobey saw the potential of his calligraphic style to reconcile the rational and irrational forces of humankind and arrive at a “unified world,” one that mirrored the union of the polarizing yin-yang principles in Asian calligraphy. In this mature work, Tobey layered strokes of white, black, and beige in an all-over pattern suggestive of the unseen energies of the cosmos.

In 1947, American critic Clement Greenberg deemed Tobey a product of the “School of Klee”—a classification that Tobey wore proudly, later professing to his dealer his “kinship to Klee.” Late in life, while living in Basel, Tobey acquired a drawing by Klee.

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.

The “Moe” Behind Paul Klee’s “Young Moe”

Paul Klee, Young Moe, 1938. Colored paste on newspaper on burlap, 20 7/8 x 27 5/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1948

Young Moe is one of the few abstract portraits in Paul Klee’s oeuvre. Its title alludes to Albert Moeschinger (known as “Moe”), a professor of music theory with whom Klee had studied at the conservatory of Bern. In 1935, Moeschinger dedicated three compositions for violin and piano (Humoresken) to Klee, who gave him two paintings in return.

Following his late style, Klee applied heavy black lines onto flat fields of color, filling his surface in all directions. The subtly modulating colors—from yellow to ocher, brown-yellow, and purplish-gray—have the emotional impact of a melody that supports the rhythmic linear notations above.

One of the last Klee works acquired by Duncan Phillips, Young Moe was regularly displayed in the “Klee room” at the Phillips, inspiring artists such as Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis.

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.

Automatic Writing as Artistic Tool

Bradley Walker Tomlin, Number 12–1949, 1949, Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 31 1/4 in., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Abby and B. H. Friedman in honor of John I. H. Baur

Just a few years before he painted this luminous composition, Bradley Walker Tomlin met Adolph Gottlieb and other leading Abstract Expressionists. The close relationships he forged with them influenced his shift from a Cubist style toward a more calligraphic, expressive language exemplified by Number 12. For this canvas, painted while Tomlin was sharing a studio with Robert Motherwell, he used the method of automatic writing to arrive at gestural calligraphic forms that float against a mystical yellow background.

Phillips Collection founder Duncan Phillips admired Tomlin’s work precisely because of its “interplay of an ordered formalism and spontaneous, expressive gesture.” Paul Klee’s art strove to marry the same principles. Number 12 combines curved arabesques with flat, ribbon-like forms; the latter became a hallmark of his mature style, as seen in Number 9, on view nearby in the Ten Americans exhibition.

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.