Beyond Form

HE BAY AREA abstract painter Lee Mullican (1919–98) first saw the work of Paul Klee in 1942 in a memorial exhibition for the Swiss artist, who had died two years earlier. It was, Mullican recalled, “one of the great revelations.…it was a fantasy world to me…The sense of what he could do by making a mark, and then making another mark and the use of color and abstraction…was a great influence.” Mullican shared with Klee a sense of the mystical purpose of art, its ability to carry artist and viewer into another world, one of heightened consciousness and