Historical Newspaper Articles

Articles:

The Nolde Paradox: Half Demon, Half Mystic: NOLDE EXHIBITION
Seldis, Henry J. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 28 July 1963: d13.

Nolde: Redeemed by His Art: " Nolde's art, not his political persuasions, placed him in jeopardy during the Nazi regime."
By JAMES R. MELLOW. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 23 Sep 1973: 151.

THE PAINTINGS HITLER HATED: AND WANTED DESTROYED. ON VIEW, AT HARVARD'S BUSCH-REISINGER MUSEUM.
Robb, Christina. Boston Globe (1960-1981) [Boston, Mass] 17 Dec 1978: AA6.


Through these historical newspaper articles, I learned more about Emil Nolde’s personality, style and movement associations, and contemporary perception by critics. I believe that discovering an artist’s personality and life is the best way to understand his work. Therefore, these articles will shed light on The Mulatto as well.

The Boston Globe article explains that Nolde’s The Mulatto was part of a 1937 Nazi exhibit “that toured Germany as an example of what the party line called degenerate art.” In addition to this, the New York Times article claims “Nolde’s art, not his political persuasions, placed him in jeopardy during the Nazi regime.” His relationship to the Nazi movement is significant as it raises questions of intentions vs. perception.

In the Los Angeles article, entitled: “The Nolde Paradox: Half Demon, Half Mystic”, Nolde’s life is pictured as imbued by a sense of paradox. Paul Klee described him as “Nolde, the primeval soul. Nolde is more than a mere creature of earth. He is a demon of the earthly region. Even one who resides elsewhere senses in him the cousin of the depths, a cousin by election.” One of the most important complexes in his personality is that although he insisted that he was striving to create a new German art, none of his spiritual ancestors were German. Seldis argues “he takes his point of departure from Goya, Rembrandt and Daumier.” This point could be important in the discussion of identity, and its multifaceted relationship to a variety of sources of inspiration.

Another interesting point mentioned in this article is that he was “filled with haughty Nordic myths of racial superiority.” This is particularly important since “the Mulatto” was a particularly controversial painting and was dismissed by the Nazis on the basis that it was against their ideals of racial purity. Nolde has a very complicated relationship with ‘race’ and this surfaces in his works. I will definitely explore this in depth with the hope discovering his reasons for painting figures like The Mulatto.
The article also explains that, despite his complexities and mysterious evocations, “Nolde’s public was touched directly by the artist since contemporary faces and figures appear in his visions of the archaic and the fantastic, linking this world of myth with the present day world.” 

One common theme of all these articles is the relationship between the artist’s biography and the themes explored in his oeuvre. They suggest that his changing spheres of artistic association and interest in non-European cultures shaped the direction his art took at different periods of his life. As I move forward with my research, I will explore these themes and read some philosophers, mainly Lacan, who wrote extensively about the relationship between the self and the other.