Paul Klee Twittering Machine (Die Zwitscher-Maschine) 1922

  • Not on view

A violent marriage of nature and industry, the crazy contraption in Twittering Machine mechanizes the songs of birds. All but one bird are tethered to a perch that can be turned by a handle over a pit, a potential trap for the latest choir member. Constructed with Klee’s characteristic wiry, agile black line, the birds lurch and cry out, their tongues resembling both musical notes and fishhooks. Klee described drawing as “an active line on a walk, moving freely” and connected his liberated line to his belief that “through the universe, movement is the rule.” In this drawing, humans turn movement and song against nature, making them activities of enslavement.

Klee treated line and color independently of each other, creating tension between the paper’s surface and the work’s atmospheric depth. He employed an oil-transfer process to copy the image from another sheet onto this one, using a needle to trace the original, which he had placed over a page covered with dried oil paint that was, in turn, placed facedown against this sheet. Distancing the artist’s hand from the final drawing, this process resulted in seemingly accidental smudges that emphasize the flatness of the picture plane. By contrast, the painted blue backdrop opens into boundless space. As an acid-pink stain of watercolor encircles the scene, the world appears to close in on the birds, reverberating with the cacophonous chaos of their songs.

Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)
Medium
Oil transfer drawing, watercolor, and ink on paper with gouache and ink borders on board
Dimensions
25 1/4 x 19" (64.1 x 48.3 cm)
Credit
Purchase
Object number
564.1939
Copyright
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Department
Drawings and Prints

Installation views

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.

How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

Acquired from the artist by the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1923 [1]; removed as “degenerate art” by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, 1937 [2]; on consignment to Karl Buchholz, Berlin, 1939; to Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York; acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 14,1939 [3].
[1] Paul-Klee-Stiftung, Kunstmuseum Bern, eds. Paul Klee: catalogue raisonné. Bern: Benteli and New York: Thames and Hudson, vol. 3 (1999), no. 2975. One of four works the Nationalgalerie acquired from the artist for 40 million M during the inflation of 1923 (see Annegret Janda and Jörn Grabowski, eds., Kunst in Deutschland 1905-1937: Die verlorene Sammlung der Nationalgalerie im ehemaligen Kronprinzenpalais, exh. cat. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1992, no. 229). Included in the exhibition Paul Klee, Nationalgalerie, Kronprinzenpalais, Berlin, February 1923. On loan from the Nationalgalerie to the Museum of Modern Art, New York for the exhibition German Painting and Sculpture, March 13 - April 26, 1931 (no. 42). On view at the Kronprinzenpalais of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin until 1933 (ibid.). Included in the exhibition Der Bolschewismus - große antibolschewistische Schau, Deutsches Museum, Munich, November 7, 1936-January 31, 1937 (see Charles Werner Haxthausen, "A 'Degenerate' Abroad: Klee's Reception in America, 1937-1940," Josef Helfenstein and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, eds., Klee and America, exh. cat. New York: Neue Galerie, 2006, pp. 159-162; Anja Tiedemann, "Auf dem Weg in ein freies Land. Paul Klees Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber," Uwe Fleckner, ed., Das verfemte Meisterwerk, Berlin: Akademieverlag, 2009, pp. 177-179).
[2] Not on "Harry Fischer list." Included in the exhibition Degenerate Art, Hofgarten-Arkaden, Munich, July 19-November 30, 1937 and other venues (Berlin, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Salzburg, Hamburg, Stettin, Weimar).
[3] Included shortly thereafter in the exhibition Contemporary German Art, November 1-December 9, 1939, Institute of Modern Art, Boston.

Provenance research is a work in progress, and is frequently updated with new information. If you have any questions or information to provide about the listed works, please email [email protected] or write to:

Provenance Research Project
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].