SHIORI FURUYA

This paper aims to clarify how André Masson, a Surrealist painter, understands Paul Klee’s art and how Masson and Klee intersect. Masson’s essay “Eulogy of Paul Klee” (1946) demonstrates his viewpoints: Klee transgresses conventional value judgments and creates open pictorial space in his paintings, turning his back on the perspective as a traditional representation system and using materials and techniques in a unique way in his creative process. In addition, his works often have archaic tones. In them, Masson finds Klee’s concept of time, which is neither linear nor chronological, and he indicates this by coining the term “infinir,” meaning “let it never end.” Masson cites Klee and the “romantics of the North” as those who desire to “infinir” – a longing Masson shares with them. He projects onto Klee his idea that an artwork should be dynamic and transformative, not static or fixed. Masson never met Klee, but drawings by both were illustrated in an edition of the German Romantic poet Novalis's The Novices of Sais published in 1949.