Paper short abstract:

In addition to the continuity between the formal expressions of sub-Saharan Sufi artists and the formal characteristics Paul Klee's work developed through his travels to Tunisia and Egypt, this paper attempts to explore the common intellectual and spiritual aspects that underlie in their work.

Paper long abstract:

The continuity between the compositions of Paul Klee and contemporary sub-Saharan visual art of Sufi Mourides is unmistakable. The inward gaze of Klee's mask-like faces anticipates that of Moussa Tine's A chacun son masque; his cryptic symbols evoke a mysterious state common to Yelimane Fall's calligraphy; and the interplay of verticality and horizontality that characterizes Klee's work also underlies many of Viyé Diba's compositions, such as Musical Materiality, in which Diba uses fabric swatches in a manner recalling the colorful patchwork of Mourides' clothing.

Through this interplay of verticality and horizontality Klee reached "the perfect accord of severing, or the resolution of tension" between the high and the low that Giles Deleuze assigns to the Baroque fold. He created an infinite fold that moves between "the pleats of matter" and "the folds of the soul;" (35) thus, Deleuze considers him one of "the great modern Baroque painters." For Deleuze, Baroque is "abstract art par excellence," however, "abstraction is not a negation of form: it posits form as folded, existing only as a "mental landscape" in the soul or in the mind."(35) Moreover, Deleuze speaks of Helga Heinzen's compositions of striped and folded fabrics as a fold that "follow a line now coming from Islam."(37) In this paper, I aim to read Viyé Diba's compositions through the Deleuzian lens of the fold, and to explore the common aspects of the "mental landscape" that connects both Klee and Sufism to the spiritual and intellectual heritage of Africa.

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