Deborah Solomon in The New York Times:
It is not every day that an angel flies to New York. But Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus” — a small, fragile drawing of a straggly angel that survived the ordeals of Nazism to become an emblem of heroic resilience — has just arrived from Jerusalem, according to James S. Snyder, the director of the Jewish Museum in New York.
…It depicts, in Klee’s typically wiry, scratchy black lines, an angel who looks less like a chubby-cheeked celestial being than a dazed adolescent — a walleyed boy afloat in the air, with small wings and a head of curls shaped like paper scrolls. His mouth hangs open, revealing widely spaced front teeth that could benefit from orthodonture. What makes the drawing a work of such supreme interest is its provenance. In 1921, Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher, was strolling through Munich when he spotted the drawing at a gallery. It was reasonably priced, about $30, but Benjamin, then in his 20s and living with his parents, didn’t have a pfennig to spare. He borrowed the money from a philosopher friend, Ernst Bloch, hung the drawing in his apartment and proclaimed it his most prized possession.
More here.
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