concept:era modern
Dance Around the Golden Calf
Oil on canvas (1910) by Emil Nolde. Depicts the biblical scene of the Israelites dancing around the golden calf (Exodus 32), but with ecstatic, almost Bacchanalian energy rendered in raw, luminous color. One of Nolde's most celebrated religious paintings.
Scholarly Significance
Nolde's Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910) is among his most important religious paintings, combining biblical narrative with ecstatic dance in raw, luminous color.
Notes
- ·Painted in 1910 as part of Nolde's series of Old and New Testament paintings.
- ·The title references Exodus 32, where the Israelites worship the golden calf while Moses receives the Ten Commandments.
- ·Nolde transformed the biblical scene into a vision of raw physical ecstasy, with figures in various states of abandon.
- ·The painting was included in the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition despite Nolde's own Nazi Party membership — one of the paradoxes of Nazi cultural policy.
- ·Confiscated from German museums under the Nazi Entartete Kunst action; its postwar restitution trajectory is documented.
- ·Now held by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.