Twittering Machine is not about a social media site where you can post your tweets, but it is the title of Paul Klee’s work from 1922. Paul Klee is a Switzerland-born artist. He is also considered a German artist. He was mainly influenced by expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
Twittering Machine, 1922, by Paul Klee
https://www.paulklee.net/twittering-machine.jsp
Twittering Machine depicts a group of birds on a wire. The end of the wire is connected to a hand-cranked. The blue-purple background looks like a dawn sky. The birds are chirping loudly marked by their open-beak and come-out-tongue.
This picture portrays the tension between the natural and mechanical. The modern world tries to dominate nature by calculating, analyzing, predicting, and manipulating them. Nature is reduced only limited to its function for humans. It is what Habermas called “instrumental rationality”. In instrumental rationality, people never appreciate nature as nature.
The interesting history behind this painting is that it was declared “degenerate art” by Adolf Hitler in 1933. The Nazi party then sold this artwork to an art dealer in 1939, where it finally found its way to New York.
Paul Klee’s work is the visual representation of his humor, childlike perspective, deep thought, and his musicality.
Paul Klee (Abstraction, Expressionism, Cubism & Surrealism)
