One of my occasional odd jobs during law school was milking cows. The farm had a thatched roof and hunkered down behind a dike and a stand of chestnut trees against the raw North Sea winds. The owner was a god-daughter of Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956) one of the first expressionist painters in Germany. The living room contained a large number of his big oil paintings, all tied down with wires to nails in the wall to protect from theft – they could not afford the astronomic insurance payments.

I was really drawn to the strong colors and fluidity of his paintings and watercolors as a child, but when I learned as a young adult about his affiliation with the National Socialist Party since the early 1920s I had a hard time  reconciling my political disgust with my admiration for his art. Ironically his body of work was declared to be degenerate art by the Nazis despite his sympathies for their cause and his declared anti-semitism.  After the war he found recognition and fame in Germany, all leanings conveniently forgotten.

The farmstead as well as the paintings within it found a tragic ending in a fire that engulfed the thatched roof in the 1980s. They could not rescue much because the paintings were tied down.  My own tug-of-war, on the other hand, had a happy ending. I decided long ago that the art counts, not who produces it.  And today’s montage is an homage to Nolde’s choice of colors, with a photograph of a juvenile bald eagle who just caught a bird for breakfast.