Hiller - The Myth of Primitivism. Perspectives on Art - Esoteric Online

<strong>The</strong> myth <strong>of</strong> primitivism 80
high (far left), and a tiny Aztec ornament, c. 3 cm (1.1 in.) high (centre head, top), which
have been reduced to the same scale in the drawing. 36
Nolde, it seems, was not so much interested in an accurate record <strong>of</strong> the objects as in
the facial expressions he found in
5.4 Emil Nolde, Mask Still Life II
(1911), 65.5×78 cm (Nolde-Stiftung
Seebull).
different types <strong>of</strong> American heads. In Mask Still Life II, he proceeded to hang the heads
as large-scale masks with grotesque physiognomies in an Ensoresque style. In Mask Still
Life IV the bottom two masks are abstracted from Mask Still Life II, but he referred back
to the drawing <strong>of</strong> the Aztec ornament for the top left mask. In this pair <strong>of</strong> paintings the
heads are gradually abstracted from their original context and status as ethnographic
specimens and exploited for their formal and expressive qualities. Moreover, the practice
<strong>of</strong> repetition and variation <strong>of</strong> a single theme in the Mask Still Lifes sets up a mode <strong>of</strong> selfreference
and internal coherence within Nolde’s own aesthetic construct that counteracts
his ‘realist’ dependence on material objects—despite their persistent reference to a
specific exterior reality. In the winter <strong>of</strong> 1911–12 Nolde began to orchestrate this practice
<strong>of</strong> internal self-reference in pairs or groups <strong>of</strong> still life paintings according to musical
principles, in the most general sense <strong>of</strong> the word, such as repetition, variation, and
inversion. Exotic Figures 1 and Exotic Figures 2, for example, are inverted versions <strong>of</strong>
each other in that the first shows two Hopi dolls and one ‘cat’, and the second, one Hopi