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For [Osamu] Okuda, the pen and watercolour drawing Angelus Descendens of 1918 is a “key work” for understanding the Angelus Novus, since it contains significant motifs that Klee omitted in the latter image: “In his work on the Angelus novus, Klee concentrated on the rather strange design of the angel itself and eliminated the other details in order to let the figure of the angel float, isolated and decontextualized, in a vague, atmospheric pictorial space.” For Okuda, the clue that points to the Angelus Novus is the central pictorial motif in the works The Yellow House, 1914 and Yellow House, 1915. The “yellow house,” derived from Vincent van Gogh’s house in Arles, forms the upper body of the angel in Angelus Descendens; it represents an “imaginary bastion of the avant garde” and serves as a “metaphor of artistic fertility in the midst of war.” 

Nepalese fungus mask (made from the Lingzhi mushroom) PNGs.

Micah Ofstedahl

Fruitless Invitation, 2019