In Urgent Color: Emil Nolde
Jenny Uglow tells us about a “radiant exhibition“: “Emile Nolde: Colour is Life,†at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, in Edinburgh. The building was once the city orphanage and the founder’s memorial claims he was followed to his grave by “100 wailing orphansâ€â€”somehow, you expect them to appear in the echoing corridors. The Nolde show, too, feels disconcerting, oddly haunted. How can one place this vital, revolutionary Danish-German artist, this great colorist whose paintings are so bold and sensual, yet who often was so virulently anti-Semitic, even joined the Nazi party, yet was subsequently banned as a painter making “degenerate artâ€?’
