36 days - 6

Today was a bit all over the place I started off compiling ideas for the 6 laws of Gestalt that best apply to graphic design: similarity, continuation, proximity, closure, figure/ground and symmetry/order. Eventually, I decided that it was going to be too complicated to cover all 6 principles in one character so I decided to move my attentions on to my back up topic. Paul Klees 'In the Current 6 Thresholds'.

The Guggenheim had this to say about the Bauhaus era painting that resides in their collection:

"In the Current Six Thresholds, 1929 ( In der Strömung sechs Schwellen )

An assiduous student of music, nature, mathematics, and science, Klee applied this constellation of interests to his art at every turn. Even his purely abstract works have their own particular subject matter. In the Current Six Thresholds, an austere composition of horizontal chromatic stripes divided into smaller units and intersected by vertical bands has been compared to landscape painting. A late Bauhaus work, it is part of a series of gridlike canvases that Klee painted after he returned from a trip to Egypt. His visual impressions of the Nile river valley are represented here through a highly schematized, geometric analogy composed of a square lattice motif and restrained tonal variations. Another geometric painting, New Harmony, demonstrates the artist’s longstanding interest in colour theory. Such flat configurations of painted rectangles appeared in Klee’s work as early as 1915 and evolved as expressions of his equation of chromatic division with musical notation. This late canvas, painted in 1936, is the last such composition and, in typical Klee fashion, looks toward the new and innovative, rather than nostalgically backward. According to art historian Andrew Kagan, the composition is based on the principle of bilateral inverted symmetry (the right side of the canvas is an upside-down reflection of the left) and the tonal distribution of juxtaposed, noncomplementary colours evokes the nonthematic, monodic 12-tone music of Arnold Schönberg. Kagan notes, in conjunction with this reading, that Klee used 12 hues in New Harmony, save for the neutral grey and the black underpainting. 

The mathematic approach to one of the natures most iconic and beautiful landscapes, the banks of the River Nile, is incredible. The subdued hues in rich darker tones draw the eye into the detail of the grid layout and allow for a perfect harmony of forms and colours.  My visual research was mainly into the painting itself as I already know a bit about Klee as an artist and his almost design-based approach to painting as was expected from a student of the Bauhaus. It seemed like an obvious to lend the structure of his grid to that of the letterform. 



Here alongside scrapped sketches of the 6 relating to gestalten principles are the initial sketches of a 6 in the negative space of the painting and using the painting modules to create the number.

I started trying to recreate the painting in vector form, trying to find a 6 in a translation of the existing grids by Klee. Also playing on and trying to further the technique of bilateral inverted symmetry by making the top left of the number and the bottom right the same grid set up but inverted. However, none of this looked good so it was quickly scrapped, the 2d vectors with no texture and lack of appropriate brush tool looked so basic and bad and the letterform was somewhat lost. 

In a quick last-minute change of plan, I decided to go back to the drawings board and create a stylised grid out of the original parameters of the paintings grid system. Although I tried to follow Klees original grids as closely as possible I did of course aid legibility by giving a uniform weight to most strokes and curved the corners is a bid to make the cells flow into each other better and give an idea of the human application of paint instead of an overly mathematic pixel-like aesthetic. It was also important for me to continue the body of the 6 to the far right end of the tile as a means of translating the weight and focal point of the painting. 

Post:

"6 is for ‘In the Current Six Thresholds’ - the 1929 landscape painting, one my favourites by Swiss artist Paul Klee. The geometric grid layout and restrained tonal pallet are said to encapsulate the river Nile and surrounding landscape, providing the structure for my 6."

The letter form I displayed as a negative from the background painting and as a clipping mask over it, placing the form within the landscape and allowing the grid system inspiration to be apparent. The painting is not well known enough to be recognisable alone.