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Lot Essay
Stilleben N (grosser Tamburan und Chinesenpaar) is one of a series of related still life paintings that Nolde executed in 1915 using objects from his trip to the South Seas in 1913. Like most of his Expressionist colleagues, the former Brücke member found inspiration in the art of non-European cultures and often sketched the so-called "primitive" artifacts and cult objects in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin. The idea of man and nature existing in harmony, untouched by civilization, preoccupied the imagination of many Expressionist artists, who emulated the example of Gauguin's legendary experiences in the South Seas. Nolde and his wife Ada got a chance to experience their own exotic journey when they accepted an invitation to travel with the "Medical and Demographic Expedition to German New Guinea," which the German Colonial Office funded and dispatched in the summer of 1913. The trip, which terminated with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, took the couple through Russia, Manchuria, Korea, Japan, China, Manila and the Palau Islands en route to their destination. Nolde later remarked in his memoirs: "This one year was so unendingly rich that it seemed to contain ten years of my life" (E. Nolde, Mein Leben, Cologne, 1976, p. 305).
The porcelains and sculptures that Nolde acquired on this trip provided him with a new repertoire of exotic motifs for his still life compositions, in which he brought together objects from different cultures in various and surprising combinations. In the present work, the painter included three objects that connote exoticism. The "Tamburan" (fig. 1) is a wooden ancestral Malanggan figure from New Ireland, an island in Papua New Guinea that was governed as a German protectorate (called New Mecklenburg) from 1884 to 1914. Nolde likely acquired the porcelain Chinese pair during his extensive excursion into mainland China, and other canvases feature 19th century porcelain groups from Russia. The cushion cover with the flying bird is a piece of weaving that Ada Nolde created after her husband's design. Like the Tamburan, this pillow and similar fabrics can be seen in different still life paintings from this series.
Nolde purposefully composed novel and provocative juxtapositions in these works that are based on his idea of pure artistic significance rather than historical or cultural contexts. He paired European and non-Western artifacts, various exotic objects, and decorative and high arts. The artist had similarly upheld this strategy when he authored an introduction to a book titled The Artistic Expression of Primitive Peoples in 1911. Although the text was never published, the accompanying pencil sketches of objects in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin led to the composition of "ethnographic" still-life paintings like the present painting. In a letter of 1913, Nolde commented on the priority of aesthetic criteria, stating: "It seems to me that the best solution is attained when the finest works of art of the most diverse periods and quite different genres are places or hung next to each other, provided that they really go together as regards their color and form the most different works of art in juxtaposition set themselves off from one another and thereby heighten the effect" (quoted in P. Vergo and F. Lunn, Emil Nolde, London, 1996, p.149).
(fig. 1) Photograph of a Malanggan figure ("Tamburan") from Nolde's collection. Seebüll, courtesy, Nolde-Stiftung. BARCODE 26000466
The porcelains and sculptures that Nolde acquired on this trip provided him with a new repertoire of exotic motifs for his still life compositions, in which he brought together objects from different cultures in various and surprising combinations. In the present work, the painter included three objects that connote exoticism. The "Tamburan" (fig. 1) is a wooden ancestral Malanggan figure from New Ireland, an island in Papua New Guinea that was governed as a German protectorate (called New Mecklenburg) from 1884 to 1914. Nolde likely acquired the porcelain Chinese pair during his extensive excursion into mainland China, and other canvases feature 19th century porcelain groups from Russia. The cushion cover with the flying bird is a piece of weaving that Ada Nolde created after her husband's design. Like the Tamburan, this pillow and similar fabrics can be seen in different still life paintings from this series.
Nolde purposefully composed novel and provocative juxtapositions in these works that are based on his idea of pure artistic significance rather than historical or cultural contexts. He paired European and non-Western artifacts, various exotic objects, and decorative and high arts. The artist had similarly upheld this strategy when he authored an introduction to a book titled The Artistic Expression of Primitive Peoples in 1911. Although the text was never published, the accompanying pencil sketches of objects in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin led to the composition of "ethnographic" still-life paintings like the present painting. In a letter of 1913, Nolde commented on the priority of aesthetic criteria, stating: "It seems to me that the best solution is attained when the finest works of art of the most diverse periods and quite different genres are places or hung next to each other, provided that they really go together as regards their color and form the most different works of art in juxtaposition set themselves off from one another and thereby heighten the effect" (quoted in P. Vergo and F. Lunn, Emil Nolde, London, 1996, p.149).
(fig. 1) Photograph of a Malanggan figure ("Tamburan") from Nolde's collection. Seebüll, courtesy, Nolde-Stiftung. BARCODE 26000466