Exhibitions 1

Emil Nolde (Whitechapel Art Gallery, till 25 February) Christopher Bramham (Marlborough Fine Art, till 26 January)

Tempests of colour

Martin Gayford

The English tend to look south for art, as they do for their favourite food. Conse- quently, we don't know as mucl% as we should about the artists of the north. Ger- many, for example — if not exactly artistic terra incognita — can be a hazy zone for the Anglo-Saxon aesthete. We've got to know Klee and Beuys. Awareness of Max Beck- mann is growing. But how many could immediately put a picture to such celebrat- ed names as Max Pechstein, or Karl Schmidt-Rottluff? Emil Nolde is such another: he is a painter with a large reputa- tion, but it's a little difficult to remember precisely what that reputation is for. For this reason alone the new exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery — the first ever major show in a British public gallery — is very welcome.

There is a substantial quantity of paint- ing on show, even though some of the important pictures could not be lent and there is only a small sample of graphic work and watercolours. It gives one a good opportunity to get to know Nolde — but that, it must at once be said, is a less com- fortable experience than making the acquaintance of contemporary French artists such as Matisse and Bonnard.

But then Nolde was a difficult customer, a loner, late-starting and non-joining. He did not hit form until he was approaching 40. His brief membership of the Berlin Secession group ended in a notable scandal

— the Noldestreit or Nolde dispute involving denunciation and counter denun- ciation in the press. Nolde subsequently concluded that the art world was against him. In 1934 he equally briefly joined a local political group affiliated to the Nazi party. From Nolde's point of view this probably pragmatic move ended even more unsatisfactorily — apart from the later damage to his reputation, the Fiihrer strongly disliked his work. There were more pictures by Nolde in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937 than by any other artist.

In 1941 he was placed under a Malverbot

— painting ban — forbidding him either to exhibit or work, but undeterred he went on to produce thousands of tiny watercolours — a few are on show — which he called his `unpainted paintings'. Overall, while no real Nazi, he seems to have been a man who placed an unfashionably high value on instinctive emotion and native soil — which for him was the lowland border between Germany and Denmark.

Nolde's art is full of passionate outbursts

— strident colour, violently simplified drawing, and a queasy sexuality very far form the luxe, calme et volupte of the south. The erotic and the religious blended in his feelings about nature.

At 15, he remembered, 'I lay down, my Emil Nolde's 'Close Evening, on show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery back flat on the earth, eyes closed, my arms stretched out above me, and then I thought: in this way lay your saviour Jesus Christ . . . and then I turned myself around, dreaming in undefinable thoughts that the whole large round wonderful earth was my lover'. As this suggests, Nolde's art can be acutely embarrassing to an English sensibility.

In fact, there are some truly dreadful pic- tures in this show. 'Ecstasy', for example, of 1917 — inspired, amazingly, by the Immac- ulate Conception — is a picture of appalling vulgarity, all bulging eyes and thrusting breasts, executed in a bilious combination of purple and mustard yellow. Others, especially in the upper galleries, are marred by coarseness of drawing, imag- ination and touch. His fantasy pictures of trollish bugaboos sometimes suggest a Dis- ney version of Lord of the Rings.

But when he gets it right — most often with landscapes and flower pieces results are palpable hits. The reason, I think, is largely to do with the power of his colour. This again is the reverse of harmo- nious and Matissean. Schmidt-Rottluff, a friend and contemporary, talked about Nolde's 'tempests of colour' — which is often exactly right. Most of his marvellous seascapes are painted under skies darkened by evening or rain.

But whether bright or sombre, Nolde's colour is always dramatic. Blue and orange contraries clang together in 'Flowers and Clouds' (Nolde was an enthusiastic garden- er, one of his most likable traits). 'Devil and Scholar', one of the most successful figure pieces, is made by a wonderful, weird harmony of scarlet, purple and olive- green. 'Evening Landscape North Freis-

land' — red clouds, indigo earth separated by a black stripe of hill — could almost be an abstract by Rothko.

`Colour,' according to Nolde, 'always has something to say; sometimes it can even express an opinion.' In Nolde's case it seems more expressive of emotions: the turbulent majesty of nature, the primitive energy of wild dancing. When he was bad he was very, very bad; when he was good, on the other hand, he was a painter to rank with Ensor or Munch — and well worth going to see.

Christopher Bramham, whose paintings are at Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albermarle Street, might be thought of as school of Lucian Freud. At least, he has sat for that painter, and there is something Freudian about his thick and carefully pondered brushwork. But the resemblance doesn't go much further. Bramham's pictures lack the disturbing intensity of Freud's work. These latest pictures, in fact, are positively lyrical, in a low-key outer London way. Constable, in fact, is more the reference point. Most are landscapes, or rather suburbscapes, presumably set in Richmond where he lives.

Their subjects are mundane enough — a stretch of modern houses, a railway line, a road — but in the most striking Bramham's focus is mainly on the trees. Even in the most unenchanted English spot there is often an extraordinary leafy burgeoning at certain times of year. Green banks and swathes of vegetation half bury brick and tarmac, and it is on this that Bramham has concentrated in paintings such as 'Railway Bridge, Spring and Bridge, Noon'.

These are admirable paintings — every brushstroke satisfyingly solid and right.

Christopher Bramham's 'Hawthorns in Winter' at Marlborough Fine Art They demonstrate that unexperimental realist painting can still show us new things about the world around us.

After seeing Bramham's land- scapes, you will look at suburbia in a slightly different way. There are also some lovely still-lives of quinces, studio interi- ors, and pastels the last of which do not work so well. Bramham needs the density of oil paint.

If you're still won- dering about what to give for Christmas, how about art — always an acceptable gift, especially to one- self. Among the mixed shows galleries traditionally mount at this season, there are many possibilities. Abbot and Holder, 30 Museum Street, are probably the most reliable place to find a nice inexpensive picture. But even on Cork Street, there are possibilities.

Among the 'Drawings Of Distinction' at Theo Waddington Fine Art (until 22 December), there are beautiful studies by John Lessore, for example, at around £500 — a very acceptable thing to find in a stocking. Across the road at Beaux Arts, no 22, the 'Small Paintings' (until 3 February) include oils of cockney bruisers by Ray Richardson also around £500. A Hockney or Hodgkin print from Alan Cristea (no 31) will cost as much as a small car — but may, of course, give far more satisfaction. After all, art lasts a lifetime.