[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2213958642.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA Paul Klee painting famously owned by the philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin is currently stuck in Israel as a result of the war waged by Israel and the United States in Iran. The work was to make its American debut earlier this month. <\/p>\n
\n\tAs noted in a Hyperallergic<\/em> review and then reported out by the New York Times<\/em>, Klee\u2019s Angelus Novus<\/em> (1920) was supposed to appear in \u201cPaul Klee: Other Possible Worlds,\u201d an exhibition that opened last week at the Jewish Museum in New York. Instead, the work is represented by an authorized facsimile and a note in the wall text that reads: \u201cDue to current conditions affecting international transport, the shipment of the original artwork has been temporarily delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJames S. Snyder, the director of the Jewish Museum, told the Times<\/em> that the Israel Museum\u2019s loan of the work \u201cremains operative\u201d and will materialize \u201cwhen the time is right.\u201d Of the situation, he said, \u201cWe knew we had to be prudent and patient and to wait until conditions were appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Jewish Museum had already produced an authorized facsimile as part of its planning for the exhibition. The reproduction was slated to take the artwork\u2019s place in the show after a month of the original being on view, given its status as an \u201cextremely light-sensitive\u201d oil transfer and watercolor work on paper. But the understudy got the call to star in the premiere, given the state of geopolitics now. About the scenario on the other side of the supply chain, the Times <\/em>reported: \u201cA spokesman said the Israel Museum does not discuss the shipping of artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs for Angelus Novus<\/em>, it was acquired in 1921 by Benjamin, a friend of Klee\u2019s who mused on the painting\u2019s main figure in an essay titled \u201cTheses on the Philosophy of History.\u201d In that text, from 1940, Benjamin wrote: \u201cThere is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus<\/em>. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where\u00a0we\u00a0<\/em>see the appearance of a chain of events,\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA little later, Benjamin compares that one single catastrophe to a storm blowing in from Paradise. He writes: \u201cThe storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>storm.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/paul-klee-thwarted-us-debut-mideast-war-1234779076\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2213958642.jpg?w=1024″] A Paul Klee painting famously owned by the philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin is currently stuck in Israel as a result of the war waged by Israel and the United States in Iran. The work was to make its American debut earlier this month. As noted in a Hyperallergic review and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1849357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1849357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1849357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1849357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1849357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}