Charlotte Salomon: Life? Or Theatre
Our art piece of the week is the lyrical masterpiece of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon: ‘Life? Or Theatre”. 🎭
Born in 1917, Charlotte was raised in a Berlin house of intellectuals. The fabric of her lively household, however, began to crumble after Charlotte’s mother passed away in 1926 and Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor. Charlotte’s father lost his job shortly after and Charlotte was forced to withdraw from the painting school she had been enrolled in for two years.
In 1938, Charlotte was forced to flee to her grandparents’ home in the South of France after her father was detained and tortured. A year later, her grandmother committed suicide following the outbreak of World War II. She was told by her grandfather the truth of her own mother’s suicide, whom she believed had died by influenza, and how there had been eight suicide victims in the family over three generations.
Faced with the weight of this history of finality in her family, Charlotte found herself at a cross point: “The question: whether to take her own life or to undertake something eccentric and mad.” Choosing “eccentric and mad” she embarked on a journey to create her monumental work “Life? Or Theatre”, composed of nearly early eight hundred page-size gouaches and overlays with vignettes, playful commentaries, and choruses.
Retreating into isolations, she painted obsessively for over one year (1941-1942), narrating her life from Berlin, France, the discovery of her dark family history and her decision to channel art to overcome it. She wrote: “My life began when I found out that I myself am the only one surviving, I felt as though the whole world opened up before me in all its depths and horror. I will live for them all.”
Mixing fantasy and reality, she used the art to cope with the abuse she received at the hands of her grandfather and the extreme and horrific reality of Nazi Germany. Fearing for her own safety, she left the work with a trusted friend. She married another German-Jewish refugee, and a year later was forced out of her home and deported to Auschwitz in October, 1943. She was killed aged 26, five months pregnant at the time.
Sources
https://magazine.artland.com/lest-we-forget-charlotte-salomon-life-or-theatre/
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/salomon-charlotte
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-obsessive-art-and-great-confession-of-charlotte-salomon
https://jck.nl/en/exhibition/charlotte-salomon-life-or-theatre
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/genre-bending-death-defying-triumph-charlotte-salomons-art-180973561/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/06/charlotte-salomon-life-or-theatre-review-jewish-museum-london-graphic-autobiography