Charlotte Salomon

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Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. Her mother committed suicide in 1926; her grandmother committed suicide at the outbreak of the Second World War. Salomon fled Berlin in 1939, settling in still-unoccupied Vichy, living first with her grandfather and later her husband, a German music teacher, for three years. Salomon and her husband were betrayed to the Gestapo following the Nazi invasion of France. Before the transport to Auschwitz arrived, Salomon entrusted more than 1,000 gouaches to a friend. These included her autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel (Life? or Theatre?: A Singspiel ) consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1940 and 1942. She was murdered in a death camp in October 1943.

Contents 1 Life? or Theater? (Leben? oder Theater?) 2 Singespiel [sic] 3 Reputation 4 Bibliography 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Life? or Theater? (Leben? oder Theater?)

This series of gouaches is an extraordinary and unique document. In great detail it tells the story of Salomon's family and friends, her own internal life, the political background, and her obsessive love affair. Salomon had artistic training and her household was highly cultured. The way she tells her story is full of tragedy, but the telling also reveals Salomon's sly humour and wit. The series starts out with highly detailed and multi-layered images of the life and relationship between her mother and father. As the story unfolds the style gets broader and more expressionistic. The last 'chapters' are almost violent in their expression, as if Salomon is aware of her impending fate and can hardly wait to write and paint the details of her story as the Gestapo close in on her life.

A large part of Life? or Theater? is about her obsession with 'Amadeus Daberlohn', a voice teacher she met through her stepmother 'Paulinka Bimbam' (Salomon gives all her characters humorous, often punning, pseudonyms). These sections are honest and compelling accounts of her passionate relationship with Alfred Wolfson - the one person who took her artistic work seriously. It is not possible to know if Salomon's version of her relationship with Wolfson corresponds with reality, but he was undoubtedly her first love.

In 1943, when she was 26, Charlotte Salomon gave her collection of paintings to Dr. Moridis, a trusted friend who had treated her grandmothers depression. "Keep this safe, it is my whole life" were the words she used as she passed over her work, aware that it would be only a matter of hours before she would be rounded up and transported.^[1],^[2]

Life? or Theater? is intended as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a Wagnerian 'total work of art' within the tradition of the ambitious nineteenth century German idea to fuse poetry, music and the visual arts. Yet Salomon's work is a reversal of that tradition which was intended to be the ultimate manifestation of Germanic culture - instead it is a deeply moving and personal masterpiece, created by a 'young woman who belonged to a supposedly alien race and who was therefore held not to even have a right to exist, let alone a place in society.' ^[3]

[edit] Singespiel [sic]

Salomon entitled her work, Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singespiel. Singspiel is an German music form resembling "operetta" in some respects, although actors’ parts are often spoken over, rather than sung with the music. Music provides the backdrop for the play-form which is most often comical in nature, tragedy being a less-frequent motif. Romantic interest nearly always plays a prominent part. Singspiel was considered less elevated than opera proper, often being written in the vernacular (German or French).^[4] Note that Salomon’s spelling, "Singespiel", is off by an ‘e’, but whether this was intentional of not is unclear. While celebrated composers such as Bach and Hiller are known to have worked in the form, Singspiel often introduced folksongs, marches and narrative songs into its repertoire. The plays were usually performed by traveling troupes and not necessarily by established companies within metropolitan centers. By the early twentieth century, at the time of Salomon’s appropriation of the form into her work, the Singspiel had ceased to be an active category of musical performance anywhere.^[5] Thus, Life? or Theater? is not only a series of paintings. It includes a script in the form of words that are either themselves in the form of paintings, written into the paintings, or presented as overlays to the images. It also has a 'soundtrack' - music chosen by Salomon that reinforces her stories. These range from Nazi marching songs to Schubert lieder and extracts from the music of Mozart and Mahler. The work is operatic in scale, highly modern in execution, unique in its form, and has an enduring power.

[edit] Reputation

The paintings that make up Life? or Theater? only began to be exhibited in the 1960's, the first book with 80 reproductions was published in 1963, and drew comparisons with the story of Anne Frank.^[6]. Marc Chagall was shown the paintings and was impressed. In 1971 the collection was placed in the care of the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam. In 1981 the Museum presented 250 scenes in narrative sequence, and critics began to comment on the work. ^[7]. An exhibition at the London Royal Academy in 1998 was an unexpected sensation, helped by the publication of a complete catalogue. The work is still relatively little known, in part because Salomon's work doesn't appear on the international art market, as the whole archive belongs to the protective Charlotte Salomon Foundation based at the Joods Historisch Museum. The art historian Griselda Pollock dedicated to Charlotte Salomon a chapter in her Virtual Feminist Museum, analysing her work in terms of contemporary art, Jewish history and cultural theory.^[8]

There have been several other exhibitions of parts of Life? or Theater?, and a number of films and plays made about Charlotte Salomon's life, notably Company of Angels by the UK theatre company Horse and Bamboo Theatre.

Lotte's Journey, a play by Candida Cave was performed at New End Theatre Hampstead in October/November 2007.

[edit] Bibliography

• Charlotte Salomon: Life or Theater. The Viking Press, New York, 1981. ISBN 0-670-21283-0.
• Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, To Paint Her Life. Harper Collins 1994. ISBN 0-06-017105-7.
• Ernst van Alphen, "Charlotte salomon: Autobiography as a Resistance to History" in: Inside the Visible", edited by C. de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996.
• Griselda Pollock, "Jewish space/Women's Time" in: Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-0-415-41374-9.

[edit] External links

• Online Gallery Joods Historisch Museum

[edit] References

1. ^ Charlotte Salomon: Life or Theater. The Viking Press, New York, 1981. ISBN 0-670-21283-0.
2. ^ Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, To Paint Her Life. Harper Collins 1994. ISBN 0-06-017105-7
3. ^ Norman Rosenthal p.9, Charlotte Salomon, Life? or Theatre?; Royal Academy of Arts 1998; ISBN 0 900946 66 0
4. ^ Branscombe, Peter: Singspiel, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol.18, pp. 438-39.
5. ^ Ibid.
6. ^ Felstiner, To Paint Her Life. ibid.
7. ^ Ibid.
8. ^ Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-0-415-41374-9