Much has been said in recent years about the inglorious role of ethnological museums in colonial times. On the other hand, hardly anything has been heard about the proximity of some expressionist artists to the colonial project. They were neither slave drivers nor art thieves, they just collected impressions. Nevertheless, they were propagandists and beneficiaries of colonial exploitation. The Arte documentation is now dedicated to them The white look. Colonialism and expressionism, based on an exhibition that will come to Berlin in December after stops in Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
The focus is on Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein, two painters of the “Brücke” who, like so many, were looking for new forms, a new art, during and after the turn of the century. When they saw the pictures that Paul Gauguin had painted in the South Seas, they believed they had found the way out of their German civilization ennui.
The paradise they had hoped for had already been damaged by other Germans when they arrived
They had already spent days at the Ethnographic Museum in Dresden and were fascinated by the “primitive” art that had been brought to Germany shortly before. But the portraits were not enough for them. They wanted to see the sun in whose light they were created, they wanted to paint the people who had created them, they wanted to become a little like these people themselves, but just a little bit.
When they arrived in Oceania with their wives, they were disappointed: the paradise they had hoped for had already been damaged by other Germans. The people were no longer as wild as they had hoped. Nolde and Pechstein were not deterred by this. They overlooked the phosphorus mines and painted beautiful women under palm trees as if the world was all right. With their rough lines and bold manifestos, the Expressionists are often considered particularly serious artists. But Wilfried Hauke, the author of the film, does not spare them: their expeditions were upscale tourism, he notes, it was about romance, ethnic kitsch. And, yes, the expensive trips had to be paid for, and the pictures of the brown South Sea beauties brought in the most money in the Berlin galleries.
How could artists approach this world in such a superficial and uninterested way?
The people who painted them until the outbreak of World War I brought the adventure to an abrupt end, they were exploited as decorative accessories, deprived if not literally, then in a symbolic way. Hauke rightly wonders how these artists were able to approach the strange world in such a superficial and uninterested way.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who is less fond of traveling, gets off even better. Inspired by visits to museums and the notorious Völkerschauen, he created his own imagined South Sea world at home.
The white look. Colonialism and Expressionism, Arte, Sunday, 4.10 p.m. and in the Arte media library.