[359] 36) NOLDE^a, THE LAST SUPPER--Nolde is a German expressionist^b who tried to bring, with his means of painting (which were expressionistic) the ecstatic character of all the religious events. You must not think that he meant that this was a photograph of the SCENE of the Last Supper, but you must imagine WHAT SPIRITUALLY HAPPENED in this event. He tried to express

in the different ecstatic and DEMONIC^c forms of this tremendous scene. And I think he came very near to it. But again, I don’t know how far he solved the problem for our situation. But this is the DIRECTION in which it has to lie. I must confess [to] you, when I first saw this picture in Dresden in the twenties, then I was tremendously expressed by it. Then came a period in which I became very skeptical. TODAY, when I see it, I have the feeling it keeps up, it is more than I thought it to be when I first saw it than in my later more critical period about it. But these are partly subjective developments, and they may be different in all of you. 37) PICASSO^d, CRUCIFIXION--Here he tries the same thing he tried in the Guernica

picture. I would say this attempt can go as religious art, but certainly it cannot go as ritual art. I don’t believe that it is possible to introduce this even as a moral, into the church, but perhaps you are more advanced than I am in my judgment about possibilities and think, perhaps, in 20 years, it could be used, and might be used, for that purpose. In any case, you see here the denaturalization of the scene, also the disrupted elements, but no triumphant indication at all.