THE BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO and the brilliant tropical hues reinforced his own vibrant color palette. Over a period of several weeks in March and April 1914, he painted nineteen large canvases at a makeshift studio in Kavieng, Northern New Ireland. On the islands, Nolde sought out primitive cultures and “prehistoric peoples” in his desire to understand mankind untouched by Western civilization. “As a person and an artist, I am always interested in all stages of human existence, from primordial nature up to and including dissolution. With the South Seas journey, I believed I had taken care of the primal stage. The wealth of experiences seen on this journey remains with one forever”6 (fig. 7). Throughout his life,7 Nolde was an inveterate collector of objects and he incorporated them into many of his works. “An almost childlike passion had taken possession of me. I needed little figures and objects for my still lifes. I bought things here and there, more than what was necessary. A little collection began to accumulate.” He acquired the things locally and on his trips abroad, including a number of sculptures from the Bismarck Archipelago (fig. 8). An uli figure that he collected in New Ireland is featured in one of his most important paintings, a work conceived and completed while still under the thrall of his South Seas trip. Still Life H (Large Tamburan Moscow Group) from 1915 (fig. 6) shows Nolde at the height of his expressionist powers and, as in many of his works, he adapted the scale of pictorial elements to fit his compositional needs. Although the Russian porcelain group is exaggerated in size, it is turned facing away, allowing the full thrust of the uli figure’s grimacing face to arrest the viewer’s attention. Berlin in the 1920s was an extraordinarily vibrant city, the Weimar capital spawning international movements in architecture, music, science, film, and, of course, art. Photography also attracted the avant-garde, and the period was best defined by “The New Vision” school of the Bauhaus’ master, Lázló Maholy-Nagy. Another who captured the zeitgeist of the times was the fashion and style photographer known as Yva (Else Neuländer-Simon). She opened her first commercial studio in 1925 and began working for many illustrated magazines such as Elegante Welt, Die Dame, and Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. In a short period of time her reputation in the German-speak- 109 FIG. 5: Kaniet Island artifacts. J. D. E. Schmeltz and R. Krause, Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg : ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Südsee-Völker, Hamburg 1881, pl. 13. scientists, museums, and adventurers vied with each other in the name of honor, power, and, of course, money to provide an eager public back home the most spectacular and wondrous of creations, all to glory in the name of the beloved Kaiser’s imperial colony. Expressionist Emil Nolde spent several wintry months in 1911 and 1912 in one of Germany’s foremost institutions, the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, sketching and drawing sculptures from Africa, the Americas, and the South Seas. He had just come back from a trip to the Belgian coast, where he met James Ensor and was inspired by the mask paintings for which Ensor was most well known. Combined with his studies at the museum and with Ensor’s startling faces still fresh in his mind, Nolde painted four Still Life with Masks,2 a series that encapsulated his love of color enmeshed with the raw urgency of what he considered the primitive inside himself. Nolde wrote, “The absolute primitiveness, the intense, often grotesque expression of power and life in the most simplest of forms—that is probably what provides such joy in these aboriginal works.”3 Nolde was so deeply moved by the richness of the art that he thought of writing a book with the proposed title of Artistic Expressions of Indigenous Peoples.4 In the autumn of 1913, Nolde and his wife, Ada, joined an official Imperial Colonial Office expedition to the Bismarck Archipelago, the purpose of which was to study the various diseases and epidemics among the local populations. The colonial administration had observed a marked deterioration in the health conditions of the work force, and this seriously endangered the colony’s economic development. Nolde was assigned a “free and special task” to study demographics and population characteristics. After stays in Russia, China, and Japan, the entourage arrived at its working destination in the colonial capital, Rabaul. Initially, the medical research was conducted in the vicinity of the neighboring Gazelle Peninsula and nearby New Britain, but later the team moved further afield to other areas of the archipelago and related islands. In his capacity as the official artist, Nolde mainly worked with easy-to-transport mediums such as watercolor, pencil, India ink, and crayon, “working with brush and paint like one possessed.”5 He produced numerous watercolors of faces, heads, and figures, and scenes of village life. The abundant flora fascinated him FIG 4: Canoe prow. New Ireland. Wood, pigment. H: 24.5 cm. Ex Charterhouse School, UK. Private collection. Photo: © Hughes Dubois.
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