Paul Klee, Wilhelm Hausenstein, and the "Problem of Style"

In the art of Paul Klee (1879-1940), we find an unmatched pluralism of styles--figurative as well as abstract, geometric as well as biomorphic, linear as well as painterly, severe styles alongside more fluid ones, often within the production of a single year. In this lecture, Charles Mark Haxthausen, former Member in the School of Historical Studies (2002) and Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art History at Williams College, examines the significance of such a radical practice in the context of the intense debates of the period concerning the social and cultural implications of pictorial style, with a focus on the writings of the critic Wilhelm Hausenstein. This lecture is part of an art history lecture series cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.