Paul Klee, Twittering Machine (Die Zwitscher-Maschine), 1922, watercolor, ink, and gouache on paper, 25 1/4 x 19″ (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:05] This is Steven Zucker.
Dr. Juliana Kreinik: [0:07] And Juliana Kreinik.
Dr. Zucker: [0:08] We’re talking about “Twittering Machine,” by Paul Klee.
Dr. Kreinik: [0:11] Or “Zwitscher-Maschine.”
Dr. Zucker: [0:12] This is one of my favorite works by Klee, and I think many people’s. It’s perhaps for me one of the most fanciful, one of the most playful works of art I can think of.
Dr. Kreinik: [0:21] These little figures, which to me they look like half birdlike creature, half puppet, half doll, even though you can’t have three halves. They have these different faces where you can see details if you look really closely. Each of them has a sense of individuality, but they all seem a little bit…
Dr. Zucker: [0:41] Mischievous, right?
Dr. Kreinik: [0:42] Mischievous is the perfect word. They seem mischievous and about to do something. It’s funny, because I look at the characters and then I’m thinking, what’s the twittering machine?
Dr. Zucker: [0:53] Well, he’s exposed for us this wonderful kind of mechanical object. It’s drawn in the simplest pen and ink on a kind of watercolor wash, really subtle and lovely but not too finished and still quite open, but there is this fabulous kind of invitation for the viewer to somehow reach in and to turn that handle and to bring this to life.
Dr. Kreinik: [1:17] You know what I’m just thinking of, and I’m thinking of this because Klee is Swiss and I’m thinking of this because it’s turning and then there’s birds, I’m thinking of a cuckoo clock.
Dr. Zucker: [1:26] Oh, I think you’re absolutely right.
Dr. Kreinik: [1:28] Do you think he was maybe creating with sort of inner workings of the cuckoo clock deconstructed and sort of turned on its head?
Dr. Zucker: [1:35] I think so, absolutely.
Dr. Kreinik: [1:36] Like the birds have been freed.
Dr. Zucker: [1:38] But here, they are freed because this is not about the mechanics of time. It’s not about the structure of time at all. This is a kind of human-powered machine, we have to reach in to bring this thing to life. If it was brought to life, you get a sense of the chaos of these birds, which is completely at odds with the notion of the precision of the Swiss clock.
Dr. Kreinik: [1:57] Absolutely. It doesn’t have that kind of precision at all. It’s not that kind of machine. It’s a machine of frivolity.
Dr. Zucker: [2:03] Look at the way he’s done it, because when you look at, for instance, the shapes that come out of each of the mouths or the beaks of these birds.
Dr. Kreinik: [2:10] Yeah, they definitely have beak-like quality.
Dr. Zucker: [2:12] They do. Those are different shapes and they become almost visual signs. They become notations of the sounds that you can imagine they would be making. It would be a fracas. It would be a kind of cacophony, but each with a distinct kind of tone.
Dr. Kreinik: [2:26] This second figure from right, with this spiral, I feel like he would sort of a boing, boing, boing sound.
Dr. Zucker: [2:32] Maybe so.
Dr. Kreinik: [2:33] Like up and down, up and down.
Dr. Zucker: [2:33] A spring-like sound.
Dr. Kreinik: [2:34] Yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [2:35] Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Kreinik: [2:35] Some of the others would just go, “Wraw, wraw, wraw.” You can sort of imagine all those things happening all at once as soon as anyone starts to turn the handle.
Dr. Zucker: [2:42] I think that’s right. You could also imagine sort of the chaos visually of how this would look if you turn the handle, because each bird is perched on a wire that sort of arcs in space, you can get the sense of them bouncing up and down and sort of gyrating. Maybe that almost bow tie-like double triangle…
Dr. Kreinik: [3:01] Oh, they must rotate around that.
Dr. Zucker: [3:03] that would spin, exactly.
Dr. Kreinik: [3:04] It would spin around. So you turned it up, then the whole thing sort of spins around that axis.
Dr. Zucker: [3:07] What Klee has done — and it’s just incredible, it’s brilliant — is in a static, frozen drawing, he’s been able to evoke sound, energy, and motion. Also, an invitation for us to somehow power the entire image as a viewer so often really does.
Dr. Kreinik: [3:27] It really calls for us to interact with it, and it calls for us to play with it. It seems like it’s just an invitation to have fun.
Dr. Zucker: [3:34] Now, that’s so interesting, because Klee is at the Bauhaus for a year now. And so often when we think of the Bauhaus, we think of something that’s slightly dour, something a little serious.
Dr. Kreinik: [3:44] Very serious, I think it’s very serious. I mean, I think that they certainly had a lot of fun, but even their fun was serious, like, “We must make new things. We must have new parties. We must find new ways to make trouble.”
Dr. Zucker: [3:58] And yet Klee seems to be making trouble in just a simply and wonderfully playful way here.
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