During my recent visit to Oslo’s National Gallery, I found time to “break” my complete and undivided attention to Edvard Munch, as I saw Emil Nolde’s “At the Night Club”. This post is about this benign infidelity.
I will not discuss of course whether an infidelity can be benign or not. This is not for this post. In any case, I claim it is, therefore it is, until we discuss it again.
I love the interplay between the cold and warm colors that Nolde has created in the picture. The woman’s blue dress contrasts with her red hair and the background to the picture, a dark glowing orange.
There is also a “wavy” aspect in the paint, that gives the picture a peculiar 3D quality. Typical example is the man’s shirt. A most difficult part, because it is white and (theoretically) boring.
The merging of colors is another unique aspect of the picture. In the detail above, it is not only (or primarily) the hands that join, it is the colors.
The man and woman in the picture do not look like a man and a woman, they are distorted in many ways, but there is nothing wrong with this.
If you want to read more about Nolde’s pictures, I have written about his seascapes, flowers, and the area near his hometwon, Husum.