National Gallery of Ireland,Dublin
Menace and rawness saturate Nolde’s powerful works. But the hateful views of this Nazi party member eventually become all too evidentI don’t usually notice the frames on paintings, let alone mention them in a review, or but those that enclose the German expressionist Emil Nolde’s seething rectangles of lurid (shocking; sensational) colour are unusually delicate and striking. Most of the paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland’s courageous and revelatory survey of this great modern artist are enclosed in stark black frames that superbly set off the glow of his yellows,reds and greens. This way of framing his art was favoured by Nolde himself. It heightens his wonderfully eerie effects. Two young people sight at us out of mask-like, lamplit faces from his 1919 portray Brother and Sister. They sight decadent, and amoral. Does the indefinably sexual aura trace at incest? Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk