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Emil Nolde, Frauen
und Pierrot (1917)
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In his violent Expressionistic manner of painting, Nolde shows us two women of ill repute brazenly exhibiting their semi-nude bodies in front of a pierrot. The heavily painted faces of the ostentatiously naked women are evidently nothing more than hollow masks, devoid of substance. In the world of the early 20th century, clowns, pierrots and other farcical anti-heroes have superseded man, the former apogee of God's creation. Like Ensor, Beckmann, Picasso etc., Nolde reveals man's identity as a conglomeration of personae, as a profusion of divergent roles and paradoxical faces which no longer conceal an intrinsic core. |
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