The Storm 1911

Editor: August Macke's "The Storm", created in 1911 using oil paints, presents this really fascinating and slightly intimidating landscape. It feels…fragmented, almost as if I’m looking through broken glass. What do you see in this piece? Curator: It strikes me as a landscape internalised. A digestion of a landscape. See how the colors clash? A bright, almost aggressive red, paired with brooding browns and shadowy blacks, but then punched through with that flash of aquatic blue and explosive yellow. I imagine Macke wasn’t just *looking* at a storm; he was *feeling* it, embodying it, transforming it into pure, almost volatile emotion. Don’t you think? Editor: Absolutely. I get that sense of raw, unfiltered feeling. Are there any clues in the way he’s used the oil paint here to get such a sense of the storm? Curator: Notice how Macke dispenses with detail; those simplified, geometric forms become metaphors for natural chaos. I reckon he’s not so interested in what the storm *looks* like, more in conveying what it *feels* like – the power, the drama. He applies these broad swathes of color so impulsively. It’s like an explosion on the canvas, really. Editor: It really does have a visceral energy, like you can almost feel the wind and rain. It makes a change from the super-detailed realistic artworks of previous periods, doesn't it? Curator: Quite so. In abandoning photographic likeness, the artwork starts speaking about internal emotion. It seems as if Macke invites the viewers to explore their own inner landscapes, their responses to chaos, destruction, beauty, hope, the universal experience of standing under ‘The Storm’. Editor: Thanks. I didn't realize that abandoning likeness to the motif can strengthen a works subjective narrative. Curator: A work’s story expands as its visual components condense. The personal experience then becomes so accessible!