Charlotte Salomon: from Leben? oder Theater? Ein singespiel
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| Artist |
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| Title |
from Leben? oder Theater? Ein singespiel |
| Date |
between circa 1940 and circa 1942 date QS:P571,+1940-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1940-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1942-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902 |
| Medium |
gouache on paper medium QS:P186,Q204330;P186,Q11472,P518,Q861259 |
| Dimensions |
height: 32.5 cm (12.7 in); width: 25 cm (9.8 in) dimensions QS:P2048,32.5U174728 dimensions QS:P2049,25.0U174728 |
| Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q702726 |
| Accession number |
4155 |
| Exhibition history |
Fodor Museum, Amsterdam, 1961 (brochure) |
| Credit line |
Charlotte Salomon Foundation |
| Inscriptions |
Page number 558 centre bottom. |
| Notes |
- This work is the concluding page of Charlotte Salomon's principal work Life? or Theatre?. Editors place it the end of the final Epilogue section. For the Jewish Historical Museum interactive page use this link.
- The final gouache harks back to the text that begins the work describing Salomon sitting beside the sea painting. A tune enters her mind and she starts to hum it. As she hums, she realises the tune matches what she is painting ...
- Salomon completed the work at the Hotel "Belle Aurore", Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 43°41′30″N 7°19′50″E / 43.691556°N 7.330430°E / 43.691556; 7.330430, in summer 1942 (the proprietor later recalled her humming while she worked), but the location depicted is undoubtedly the gardens of the Villa L'Ermitage in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where she and her grandparents has been given refuge by a wealthy American of German descent named Ottilie Moore (Salomon's work was dedicated to her). The villa was located on the Avenue Cauvin. The Salomons lived in a small house at the back of the extensive gardens. The entire area has been redeveloped but the location, 43°42′14″N 7°18′19″E / 43.703977°N 7.305241°E / 43.703977; 7.305241, can be determined from a surviving aerial photograph of the time (published p. 23 in the Royal Academy edition of her work, see also Pollock, pp. 73-5).
- After completing the work, Salomon returned to Villa L'Ermitage where she spent the next year selecting and collating the 784 gouaches and some 200 transparent overlays that comprise the work from the 1357 gouaches she had executed for it. She left the work with Georges Moridis, a family doctor who was also active in the resistance movement, some weeks before she was deported by Alois Brunner. Moridis' widow recalled her words as "Take this. It's all my life" - "C'est toute ma vie" (Felstiner p. 236).
- The page immediately preceding is the verso of four pages of densely packed text, carried on both sides, that conclude the epilogue. The final gouache depicts the fictional Charlotte Kann (representing Salomon herself) kneeling before the sea with brush and paper in her hand and the words Life or Theater inscribed on her back.
- The concluding words of the epilogue, quoting ideas of Alfred Wolfsohn, Salomon's first love represented by Amadeus Daberlohn in the work, are as follows:
- ...und sie sah - mit wachgeträumten Augen all die Schönheit um sich her - sah das Meer spürte die Sonne und wusste: sie musste für eine Zeit von der menschlichen Oberfläche verschwinden und dafür alle Opfer bringen - - - um sich aus der Tiefe ihre Welt neu zu schaffen
- Und dabei entstand
- das Leben oder das Theater???
- ... And with dream awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human surface and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.
- And from that came
- Life or Theater???
- Commentaries:
- Michael P. Steinberg calls the image the "signature" image of the work. Steinberg is reminded of Franz Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony, in which sentence of execution is inscribed on the victim's back, and describes the image as combining the innocence of the mermaid of Copenhagen with violent narrative (Steinberg pp. 1-2).
- Griselda Pollock calls it an image of the work's beginning, an affirmation of the possibility of life in that place (Pollock p. 83).
- Mary Felstiner comments that the transparent easel lets reality reach Salomon straight through her art. "Life" may mean the forces she couldn't contain, while "Theater" suggests she might still nevertheless master her story by recording it (Felstiner xiv).
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| References |
- Paul Tillich and Emil Strauss, Charlotte: A Diary in Pictures, 1963, New York : Harcourt, Brace & World LCCN 63014210.
- (ed.) Judith Herzberg, 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.
- Michael P. Steinberg (Editor), Monica Bohm-Duchen (Editor), Reading Charlotte Salomon, Cornell University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8014-3971-X, LCCN 63014210.
- Christine Fischer-Defoy and Judith C. E. Belinfante, Biography 1917-194, in Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre?. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1998, ISBN 0-900946-66-0 (pp. 15-25)
- Griselda Pollock, Life-Mapping in (ed.) Griselda Pollock, Conceptual Odysseys: Passages to Cultural Analysis, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84511-522-7 (pp. 63-88)
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| Source/Photographer |
Museum page |
Permission
(Reusing this file) |
- The bulk of Charlotte Salomon's work was published for the purposes of US law when her estate gifted her work to the Charlotte Salomon Foundation at the Joods Historisch Museum in 1971. If follows that the bulk of her work only enters the Public Domain in the US 95 years later at the end of 2066. In addition an earlier tranche of some 80 gouaches published in 1963 both in the US and abroad entered the Public Domain in the US in 1992 because their copyright was not renewed. However these gouaches may have had their copyright restored under the terms of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) depending on whether their original publication in the US coincided or not with their publication abroad. It is not Commons policy to host URAA restored works.
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