Early 20th
century was a period of many revolutions on all social fronts. Naturally,
artistic expression was used as a medium of announcing the new, recalling the
past, projecting into the future and protesting the undesirable ways of the
world. The Mulatto was painted in 1913, in the fast-changing and cacophonous
pre-World War 1 social environment.
The culture of Berlin in
1910s and 20s was very fertile and gave birth to sophisticated and innovative
artistic styles in different art forms: Bauhaus (1919-33) in architecture and
design; German modernism in literature (Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz,
1929); German expressionistic cinema (Lang, Dietrich); music (Weill and Brecht);
New Objectivity (Grosz) and German expressionism in painting (Nolde); German
idealism and aesthetic theory in criticism (Benjamin); and analytical
psychology and philosophy (Jung). (Laqueur) This cultural fertility extended
onwards until Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 and stamped out this culture that
he considered decadent.
The most important
artistic revolution that pertains to the work in focus is German Expressionism.
As discussed in one of the earlier posts, Expressionism was a movement that emerged
simultaneously in various cities across Germany as a response to a widespread
anxiety about humanity’s increasingly discordant relationship with the world
and left an important directional and stylistic mark on many different artistic
disciplines. Some characteristics of German Expressionism in painting were
bright colors, thick obvious brushstrokes, and bold forms. (MOMA)
On the political front,
it is possible to relate this work to the series of national revolutions that
happened in different corners of the world, as colonized countries demanded
their independence from empires. Empires played the most important role in the
racial mixing that defined the 18th and 19th centuries.
When countries gained their national character, questions of racial diversity
became more prominent and gave rise to artistic trends like primitivism and
political extremities like Nazism.
A discussion of this
work would not be complete without a reference to a destructive anti-revolution
that directly affected it two decades after its completion.
After his ascent to
power, Hitler rejected all forms of modernism as “degenerate art,” and Nolde’s
work was officially condemned by the Nazi regime. Although he was initially
sympathetic to National Socialism, Nazis nevertheless confiscated 1,052 works,
more than from any other artist. He was prohibited by Nazis from painting in
1941, but continued secretly in watercolor until bombs destroyed his studio in
Berlin and the archive of his prints in 1944. This painting is particularly
important since it can be read as the epitome of all that the Nazis despised:
she demonstrates what mixing races will produce and supplies pictorial evidence
for the Nazis' point of view claiming the necessity of keeping German blood
pure. (Bradley, Chapter 5)
Sources:
Bradley,
William S. Emil Nolde and German Expressionism: A Prophet in His Own Land.
Vol. no. 52. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1986.
Laqueur, Walter Weimar:
A cultural history, 1918-1933, Putnam, 1974
Moma: German
Expressionism -
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