On Paul Klee

Walking through the exquisite exhibition of Paul Klee’s late work at the Jewish Museum, faced with the maddening variety of themes, techniques, and styles on show, I found myself thinking of the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa—that tireless inventor of heteronyms, distinctive poetic personalities that we get to know by the writings they putatively produced. I told the friend I was with that it felt as though we were in a group exhibition bringing together the work of several painters.