Questions and Sources

Questions:

1) Can this painting be evaluated from a post-structuralist perspective with an emphasis on the differences between the self and the other; and the dominant and the repressed? Will a Lacanian approach reveal new meanings? 

2) Who is the woman in the painting? Is she a real or an imagined character? Is she a generalization of all that Nolde associated with exoticism?

3) Was there a disconnect between what Nolde intended and how the painting was received? Was it an intentional catalyzer for the Nazi reaction?

4) Was the painting ever privately owned? If so, by whom? Does that change our understanding?

5) What is the painting’s relationship to other paintings by Nolde made in the same period? Similarly, how is Nolde’s style related to some artistic trends in Germany and rest of Europe in the early 20^th century?

Sources: 

Barron, Stephanie, Wolf Dieter Dube, and Palazzo Grassi. German Expressionism : Art and Society. 1st ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1997. 

Benson, E. M. "Emil Nolde." Parnassus 5.1 (1933): 12,14+25.

Emil Nolde : Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Graphics. London: Fischer Fine Art Limited, 1976. 

“German Expressionism: Works from the Collection.” 2012. Museum of Modern Art.

< http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/ge/index>

Grijp, Paul van der, 1952-. Art and Exoticism : An Anthropology of the Yearning for Authenticity. Vol. 5. Berlin: Lit, 2009.  

Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981. Autres Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 2001.

Laqueur, Walter. Weimar, a Cultural History, 1918-1933. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.

Museum of, Modern Art, Starr Figura, and Peter Jelavich. German Expressionism : The Graphic Impulse. New York: Museum of Modern Art :Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2011.

Museums After Modernism : Strategies of Engagement /. Ed. Griselda Pollock and Joyce Zemans . Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2007.  

Nolde, Emil. Das Eigene Leben. Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag, 1931.

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

Schmidt, Paul Ferdinand. Emil Nolde, Leipzig: Kirkhardt & Biermann, 1929.