Daniel Richter Interview: On Emil Nolde

well he's a painter I am a painter he's a painter and naturally painters are interested in other painters and accidentally I come from the same more less the same area than him as him and spent my childhood more or less surrounded by postcards and posters of NOLA like everybody in fleet Akash Stein oh he's I mean he's a I say like he's a kind of a like it he explains it himself it's contradictory and every person is contradictory especially the artist lives with contradictory but in his case it's kind of like a red line that goes through his life I mean in terms of him as a person if we differ that from the artist is also like his explanations of authorizations are like yes he's not political he's not intellectual he's just a peasant from the countryside he has only read one book that is the Bible he is focusing on something that is I would say radical subjectivist ik but thinks that that is German estat is Deutsche tomb you know he's he's embedded in a debate between French and German culture or like like the Germans used to say like weaken German culture and French civilization and civilization is something that is to be despised that is shallow it's about forms ornament analysis the radicalism based on language while his is a radical isn't based on subjectivism and that may be a historically understandable but stupid idea I would think but it has an interesting results like lots of artists have weird ideas or like maybe wrong ideas but come to interesting results because with him his his affection towards let's say sexuality which plays a strong role in his life mask and sexuality and the inability of coping up with that I would think the core of his depicting the world and he comes to results where like you can see also like what people like Yan gained from it or if Basel it's gained from it there is first the experiments with the color per se because there's paintings that are like really liquidly painted and there's paintings that are like really roughly sick painted like reminding one when you go near off like color field paintings that gone crazy or like maybe soutine is related to that but for me the most interesting aspect of it is that the figures he paints nearly entering the level of abstraction that is leaving the body behind and and also his choice of colors his anti space because like when you look at his paintings this often said that he's also lived in the big city he spent a lot of time in Berlin even though he sings himself that he never spent time there because it's part of his construction of his own life is that he's a peasant and then he's excluded from society but he spends a lot of time with dancers and in coffee houses but actually the paintings on that topic you never have an indicator for that that's in the big city you see people dressed up as people that are supposed to live in a big city but understand like let's say Toulouse Lautrec or bow now we are or like heckle or Krishna you never see a city city you never see a street a car you don't even see a modern lamp or like some interior that would like indicate in which time that's painted because his aim is to paint something about the eternal struggle of good versus bad or men versus women or good versus evil so that's that's the thing that also explains like this kind of spiral craziness like a colorful proto yangyang structure and when I when I look at the work I mean most the interesting work is really interesting because he really leaves he's really extremely personal and comes to results that are I would say a Bentley like they're binding fathers like nobody would say goes that far in that time like related to the other expressionist the Brooklyn borough right opinion he is far more let's say basic he's like nearly he's like more like it I mean a step before let's say abstract painting in terms of American abstract painting you know like you still see leftovers of of figures and shapes but the paintings are aiming at leaving that behind they want to transcend it to just color and flatness there's never nearly never a space or like something like back and forth only if people have to mingle like there's a hand on the shoulder okay that he has to then you know like he has to make a choice for that or like find a solution for that but in general it's more like somebody it's like trying to make a crazy version of Matisse paintings of late Matisse paintings I well he he was a member of two workers he was accepted he had I think I don't know we enter the world of speculation here he was he was a very I think a recluse guy like he liked solitude he needed solitude he mainly focused all his life on work that was his main thing but you also spend a lot of time in the year in Berlin where he also mingled and you had to socialize and you had to you know like because you have to do shows you have to do openings you meet the other artists he met monk and he met answer and he met pitched on he was a member of the broker and you know like there was constantly visitors but maybe he was and I believe that that he was not really good in communication he was he was not a social likable guy and he never aimed at that so but he he was accepted and quite early on from the twenties on he was also shown a lot and he sold quite well and he had debates and but like everybody who's like and feels alienated he took the criticism way harder than he took the what he called the dope the the support I think for him it was personally I mean you have to admit that he got invited personally by Himmler in 1933 to participate in the tenth anniversary of the cap push and was sitting next to the SR leader home and I think next to Balio Fangio so so for him I think that was like you couldn't be nearer to power than that and I think for him always being like kind of inhibited kind of shy kind of even even though he had success kind of always feeling like a yeah like like a peasant you know which he was I think also one of the points of the conflict was Lieberman is that symbolically these people represent the opposite stairs the successful Jewish son of a banker who's the Cosmopolitan's the head of the noise it's a CEO and he later is the Academy president he is a very well known most important figure in German painting and then is him he's the seventh or sixth child of a big family he comes from the countryside his German is bad because it's a mix of plateaued and Denish and northern german he speaks slang he is small he's inhibited you very late gets into painting he doesn't know his way around you know he doesn't know how to mingle how to socialize he totally relies on odda his wife from copenhagen because she is the one who's who's doing that for him so for sure he is kind of I would say pampered when he gets there he doesn't understand it he can't talk to these people but he's he's overwhelmed by seeing Hitler and that the clouds around Hitler will part and the sandwich it's absolutely horrible you know but you could say it's it's maybe not understandable but explainable you know how he feels about that and then you know like so he thinks he's really on top and then the decline starts just few years later so but he has no problem in like I say psychologically he justifies that by oh yeah I'm the misunderstood artist you one thing I think is is it necessary for us to know what kind of person the artist was you know that's a general debated nowadays about everybody if it's a politician or an actor or whatever like everybody has to be rated by their private we say habits which I generally think is wrong a person that does a piece of art or writes an article or is a politician should be judged by what is obsession or whatever it is is and not by his haircuts or like his sexual deviance or whatever that's one thing the other thing is that when we look at him and when we I think he is a extremely northern guy in terms of his pistol he's very self controlled he is coming from a strict religious very humble background he established himself and the figure of himself in thinking of himself as being a peasant and somebody who considers himself an artist that is in contact with something that is like like let's say the roots of German as' as he mates it up he strongly opposed to the big city and similar satiric behavior I mean that's a common topic in in in early 19th century that artists turn away from the big city you know but he takes it to a quite radical turn because of his formal choices and the other thing is that it's that he's also a lie you know like in 1917 he is starting to have some success he's getting for sex he's having getting respect he's also getting how you say opposition but that's his aim you know like you be a how can you be a controversial artist without having a controversy part of the controversy is that you have opposition he has a lot of opposition but he has also a lot of support and I think he's a what what he definitely is he's very very not playing around you know like like you also can see it in the painting I mean it's obviously influenced by monks early surf portrays but like the staring and also light the the is not male he's not making himself more beautiful or anything like that you know it's just like it kind of kind of brush painted and we we have to keep in mind maybe we get so used to look at these things nowadays but we have to keep in mind that paintings like those were like not established you know like they were new and a lot of people hated them and he he had a lot of conflicts and that that's an interesting point also shows maybe something of his character is like when when he wanted to show in Berlin in the noisy city on which was headed by Casilla who was Jewish gallerist and Max Lieberman who was a very successful French impressionist influenced German artists who were opposed to him and took him out of the show he never forgot that he never forgot that in later when the Nazis came to power turned that and to into his a proof of his early on anti-semitism and fighting against the Jewish conspiracy in the German art world so he was supposedly as a person also an opportunist he was self-pitying himself he was very wealthy at some point constantly complaining that he was underpaid even in the Third Reich he made lots of money he was still selling well and the biggest disappointment I think in his life was that he wanted to be an exempted member of the Third Reich and being like a strong figure of what he sought was German art but then Hitler personally opposed that there was I don't know if you know that there there was a conflict till 35 36 where it was not clear because the Nazis actually had nobody you know who would be the representative of German art and his idea and an idea of part of like the circles around him law governs and Baldwin [ __ ] and the students was that they could establish something that is anti French anti-romantic and has to do with this I would call it subjectivism but this brooding that is like kind of he's a northern thing that was an idea of establishing something that was a northern painting that would also include Eduard monk and it would also exclude maybe include like zimberg or car gallon car I never can speak this name so so that was a conflict and as conflict also arose by the fact that the there was a vacuum you know like like there were actually no interesting conservative painters everybody everybody else either had left had to leave the country everybody like from George Grosz to otto dix - to who go battle and Hannah Hirsch and Hartfield union labor as a Jewish or communists or radicals or perverted or and arted they all had to leave so so he was actually the only one who together with some others like let's say miss Fonda lower and Paige Stein was a little like mingling himself through they were just they were just waiting it out maybe but he was he definitely wanted to be a member and he was a member of the Nazi Party and he wanted to be looked at as the German artist he wanted to be like the resuscitator of something that was his idea of German are and he was totally disappointed when he was banned and be the main and auditor artist so for him you could see like he was willing to denounce people he was willing to schmear his way up in a really disgusting really really disgusting and not excusable manner like and it's not interesting if he did it because of opportunism or carrier ISM or if he was really an anti scimitar if he was just dumb enough to believe in his idea of German is it's no excuse at all but the disappointment was like he he wanted that but he didn't get it he got the opposite he was the most he was known in Germany as the most famous and auditer artist who was like kicked out of all the museums but nevertheless still sold in the Third Reich the fascinating question about the reception of knowledge is more like why did the Germans or the rest of the world believe had to believe that he was not Anatomy it was known that he was a Nazi Carl Hoffer the first president of the University of constant Berlin called him Nazi amylin despised him because of his opportunism so it could have been a known fact but it never was why because you could say the German elites and the art and the people like he was representing what the Germans wanted he was a Nazi member he was an opportunist but he was also betrayed so he had you know like he aimed high but then Hitler was a disappointment Hitler personally said no stop with all that Jewish Bolshevik Negro painting it's over done you know so you could say that was a justification and excuse and it was something that had to do with the collective minds of the Germans in the 40s and 50s because now they could present somebody who was like them he makes the beautiful flower paintings he makes the he's an RTD muster crazy religious painting they are extremely German they are extremely easy to consume he is excused so he is it is that you could see it's the prototype of a German he tried and he got betrayed like all the Germans they all wanted to be Nazis or they all all went along I mean a lot of them went along and later they complained that they all got disappointed and got excluded and that there was a war and then you know all that we didn't know in it so he's he's the blueprint of that I mean I would say all this has been known and it's more based on the bigotry of the people that claimed that they didn't know and now they can point the finger on somebody and it actually doesn't cost anybody what is what kind of debate is mz3 lens rights a kind of okay book about a guy who could be no leader and who is like in opposition to the Third Reich so now you have to rewrite the whole history of all books that use somebody who in reality was different than the literary figure that's an absolutely narrow-minded and moralistic debate that's what I said like like a judge a book is a book and the painting is a painting and if he wisdom what is Hitler had decided on that maybe if governed by law from Sheila had won the debate and Gottfried Benn I mean and which composes more no problem okay what's the guy carry on and fought Venga and Strauss they all made their way through that and nobody blamed them and actually wisdom it was known and people I actually like I think they chuckled and liked it especially in the south of Germany and in Austria but no I think that's that is the moralism or the big artery of a generation that has I don't know that seems to think that the world is it moral plague on you know it's the truth is I think everybody should know he was a Nazi and it doesn't make his painting that worse or better you know that that's that because that would be idiotic what what would be the logic of that that you say okay he's a Nazi paint and now all the Nazis have to like him then you have like a show like this and then you will have skinheads here all the time looking at the paintings listening to their stupid oil music and and saying oh that's a great German painter because he wasn't not to you it that's wrong I mean you I think knowing the biography or let's say the moral or political or social behavior of a person may sharpen your look on the work but it does not in my eyes it should never diminish the work the work should be seen as the work related to other paintings in the history of paintings and for sure we can learn something about our fascination of the work like like why am i personally fascinated by certain works you know like the the weird organization the aggression the the mask likeness leaving the space behind like the whole crimson also for sure has to do with something that I am appealed by and I may be a pure white guy because I may also be somebody who's an inhibited northern guy you know like and I relate to these aggressiveness and to the kind of suppressed feelings and the anger and the radicalization that comes from that and it also may make us understand why other people don't like it at all because they look at it and see as it is it also is it is clumsy and childish and it is the first radicalism where somebody aims that something that is anti logical anti analytical it is very different from the ideas that at that time it shall not forget this it's like Picasso is already round the corner this like like cubism is about to be founded but there's already like Bana and we are there's money there's money like all these people and he is we have to admit that he he knows his [ __ ] where we well he has a very he doesn't like any painting of the 19th century of the German so so his idea of what culture is what painting is has a lot to do with honesty and truth in it has to do with like I he also says that and it makes him also a kind of a progressive figure he said he rather have and honestly done piece of folk art from somebody in Papua New Guinea er then very nicely done painting in the style of the 19th century that tries to copy Italian painting from the 17th century so so that that shows his let's say honestly while a lot of people would rather have a beautifully painted still life in the style of Rafael be personally totally despise these things Rafael is just [ __ ] he temple also like this a lot of painters that he just like he likes El Greco but he like like all expressionist but he has no interest in the in this kind of craftsmanship nostalgia that tries to copy the Renaissance paintings that makes him kind of also kind of lucid and very interesting an intelligent person and that's a I think some level where we he has also a really interesting point when he writes about early on he writes about the collections the so called ethnological collections and the museum's and he complains about the factors like why are is Japanese a Chinese art why is that not looked at as art why is it in a fur cocoon is along well and what about the so-called primitive art what about people that we don't even know what about people from Java why is that look that is something that is you know like religious mumbo-jumbo this should be looked at is what it is it is real art and it's it's so you see that that is a very radical criticism very early on I think in 1910 where he is more radical like than most people that held museums there and started dealing with that stuff for me everybody dead like confuses me or irritates me or offers something that I haven't seen before or that is interesting in understanding because I don't understand at first sight is a contemporary painter the idea of it's a little like I mean what can you you when you make music nowadays on an electronic device you still listen to let's say Robert Johnson or Samuel Burke or to whatever lay not Bernstein or showing back and that answers the question you know everything that you consume nowadays in our times is a contemporary piece of art when you can use it for your brain nowadays if not there would mean like that art is like a yogurt no it has an expired date oh yeah he died in 1956 throw away all that [ __ ] you know there but it's like oh yeah burn down the rough is in the tip alloys I mean who understands it anyway you know like it's just all like these Christian stories that we don't believe because we are all a see is snow and just take away a lot of place and it's like five or six hundred years ago that's a wrong understanding of art per se you you

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 128,908

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Emil Nolde (Visual Artist), daniel richter

Id: U-q8mK_pbwg

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 13 2014