Angelus Novus
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''Angelus Novus'' (New Angel) is a 1920
monoprint Monoprinting is a type of printmaking where the intent is to make unique prints, that may explore an image serially. Other methods of printmaking create editioned multiples, the monoprint is editioned as 1 of 1. There are many techniques of mono-pr ...
by the Swiss-German artist
Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
, using the oil transfer method he invented. It is now in the collection of the
Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...
in
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
.


History

The artist's friend
Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
, a noted German critic and philosopher, purchased the print in 1921. When he had to flee Germany in 1933, he took it with him into exile. Before he tried to flee further when the Nazis invaded France, Benjamin entrusted Klee's drawing, together with other important papers, to
Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 8 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...
, who hid it at the
Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a p ...
in Paris where he worked. Benjamin himself was caught at the Spanish border and committed suicide in September 1940. After World War II, Bataille gave the print to
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
in Frankfurt, who per Benjamin's last will sent it on to
Gershom Scholem Gershom Scholem (; 5 December 1897 – 21 February 1982) was an Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew Un ...
, a distinguished scholar of Jewish mysticism who had emigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1923. According to Scholem, Benjamin felt a mystical identification with the ''Angelus Novus'' and incorporated it in his theory of the “angel of history,” a melancholy view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair. In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “ Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Benjamin describes ''Angelus Novus'' as an image of the angel of history:
A Klee painting named ''Angelus Novus'' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
In 2015, in conjunction with her solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, American artist R. H. Quaytman discovered that Klee had pasted the monoprint over an 1838
copperplate engraving Intaglio ( ; ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that m ...
by Friedrich Müller after a portrait of
Martin Luther Martin Luther ( ; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, Theology, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Reformation, Pr ...
by Lucas Cranach.


Legacy

The name and concept of Klee's "New Angel" has inspired works by other artists, filmmakers, writers and musicians, including
John Akomfrah Sir John Akomfrah (born 4 May 1957) is a Ghanaian-born British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent, whose "commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in ...
,
Ariella Azoulay Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (; born Tel Aviv, born February 21, 1962) is an author, art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture. She is a professor of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature ...
,
Amichai Chasson Amichai Chasson (also Amichai Hasson, Hebrew: עמיחי חסון; born 1987) is an Israeli poet, curator and filmmaker. Since 2015, Chasson has served as the artistic director and chief curator at the Beit Avi Chai cultural museum in Jerusale ...
,
Carolyn Forché Carolyn Forché (born April 28, 1950) is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate. She has received many awards for her literary work. Biography Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Michael Joseph and Louise ...
,
Laurie Anderson Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work encompasses performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting,Amirkhanian, Cha ...
,
Rabih Alameddine Rabih Alameddine (; born 1959) is an American painter and writer. His 2021 novel ''The Wrong End of the Telescope'' won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Early life Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. (Alameddi ...
, Daniel Boyd and
Ruth Ozeki Ruth Ozeki (born March 12, 1956) is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels '' My Year of Meats'' (1998), '' All Over Creation'' (2003), '' A Tale for the Time Being'' (2013), an ...
. In 1997, German art historian Otto Karl Werckmeister included Klee's "New Angel" image among his selection of "icons of the
left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * ''Left'' (Helmet album), 2023 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relativ ...
." He discussed Benjamin's use of the painting as an important contribution to its iconic status.Werckmeister, ''Icons of the Left: Benjamin and Einstein, Picasso and Kafka After the Fall.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997: 9.


See also

* List of works by Paul Klee


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Angelus Novus 1920 paintings Paintings by Paul Klee Walter Benjamin Angels in art 20th-century prints Monotype prints