Curatorial notes
This is 'Dancing Couple' by Emil Nolde, though the exact date it was made is not known, but Nolde lived from 1867 to 1956. The image is a flurry of dark, smudgy marks, like charcoal rubbing in a sketchbook. It’s the kind of drawing that isn't overworked. The surface is raw and immediate, emphasizing the physicality of the medium. It’s almost like the couple are emerging from a storm of marks, their forms just barely discernible, which gives you a sense of movement, and maybe even the blurred vision of being drunk, or lost in music. The way the marks coalesce to form the dancers’ limbs and clothing reminds me a bit of Kathe Kollwitz, another German artist who was working around the same time. Both artists share a gift for rendering emotional intensity through gestural mark-making. But where Kollwitz often conveys suffering and social struggle, Nolde seems to be capturing a moment of joy, albeit a fleeting and somewhat ambiguous one. It makes me wonder what the dancers are feeling, and what we bring to this picture as viewers.
