A septet of rooms dedicated to Emil Nolde's trip to the South Pacific.
When, in October 1913, the painter Emil Nolde and his wife, Ada, joined a demographic and medical research expedition to the South Pacific to get a first-hand impression of the primitive cultures of New Guinea, the odds were clearly stacked against the trip. The journey was certain to be both exhausting and dangerous—reaching the then Pacific German colonies of Neu Mecklenburg and Neu Pommern meant two months of travel via Russia, Siberia, Japan, China and the Philippines. Once there, Nolde would risk being attacked by natives (indeed, he often painted with a pistol at hand). Financing the trip also put the 47-year-old artist into tremendous debt. Finally, tropical disease was rife in the region and was later to cost the life of a young German nurse. Nonetheless, Nolde and Ada returned 11 months later, Emil’s sketch block and canvases full of spectacular images. Moreover, the painter was able to recover his costs, and, even more importantly, the works were to have a lasting impact not only on his own art but also on that of other European painters.The artistic results of the journey are currently on view at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in an inspired exhibition: “Emil Nolde und die Südsee” (Emil Nolde and the South Pacific). The artworks and artifacts, displayed in seven rooms against walls painted in assorted shades of purple and mauve, follow a loose chronological order, allowing the visitor to join Nolde, at least in spirit, on his travels.
The decision to visit New Guinea was not the result of a whim, Nolde having been fascinated by primitive cultures for quite some time before 1913. The first room of the exhibition features drawings he made of artifacts he viewed at the Museum für Völkerkunde (Ethnological Museum) in Berlin in 1911/12, as well as examples of native art from around the world comparable to what Nolde must have seen in Berlin. The painter believed that the only way to create new art was to observe the uncorrupted lifestyle of native cultures, such as those of New Guinea. Perhaps this belief explains the naive quality of many of the sketches, such as the simple linear drawing entitled Tanzmaske (Dance Mask, 1911–12). Here, the artist seems to be grappling with second-hand impressions that he wishes to interpret in a new way.
However, in the second room Nolde is on the road, and, suddenly, his pictures spring to life. Groups of Russians are huddled up at railway stations, their faces vermilion and ochre blotches, in the cold setting of Frierende Russen (Freezing Russians, 1914). Delicate washes of Chinese and Japanese figures seem no more substantial than the paper they have been drawn on. Here, too, are the few sketches Emil Nolde made of his travel companions, earnest and academic Dr. Leber, the expedition leader, in somber pen and ink, and the young nurse Gertrud A. portrayed in swaths of cherry red and black. This room also contains a chronology of the trip and some enlarged maps, which provide a useful orientation for anyone with a shaky grasp of geography.
In the next rooms, viewers will revel in the lush tropical vegetation of the South Pacific. Rough, sweaty depictions of exotic plants drawn on yellow Chinese rice paper and hot, vivid landscapes in orange, fuchsia and emerald are followed by our first view of the local inhabitants. Although some paintings were done on the spot—many of these were confiscated on the homeward journey, given up for lost and later discovered unharmed in a warehouse in Plymouth, England—and some after Nolde had returned home, they are united by the painter’s singular view of what he saw. In the rows of portraits showing fierce, dark paint-smeared warriors, or groups of villagers whiling away a steaming, purple afternoon in Dorfszene (Village Scene, 1913), Nolde seeks to capture the singularity and individuality of what he sees. This is not Gauguin’s romantic South Sea utopia. Instead the viewer is shown the plain, the terrifying and very often coincidental moments of Nolde’s visit and, as if to prod visitors into a clearer realization of what they are seeing, every room contains a fearsome collection of elaborately decorated spears, arrows, masks and shields.
In the final room of the show, the temperature suddenly drops: here is only one painting, a large self-portrait of Nolde in cool grays and whites, his staring blue eyes set in a jaundice-yellow face. In a simple volte-face we can observe Nolde as perhaps the natives of New Guinea saw him and are left wondering how they must have felt, confronted with this cold, half-dead looking figure from the north.
“Emil Nolde und die Südsee,” Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, March 23–May 26, 2002, open daily 10 am–8 pm.
