Charlotte Salomon: A Visual Testament - exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England

Art in America, Jan, 1999 by Raphael Rubinstein

With the art-school sequence, the 200-plus-page "Prelude" comes to an end and the "Main Section" of Life or Theater? begins. All that has gone before, the reader discovers, is only a prelude to the central part of Salomon's story, the 467 painted pages which tell of her own and Paula Lindberg's encounter with a charismatic and visionary singing instructor named Alfred Wolfsohn (called "Amadeus Daberlohn" in Life or Theater?).

When Salomon met him in 1937-38, Wolfsohn was 41. After returning from the First World War with severe shell shock, he had abandoned his law studies and devoted himself to voice therapy. The narrative calls him a "prophet of song" and has him enter the story to the tune of the Toreador's song from Carmen. By 1937, Wolfsohn, who was Jewish, was barred from working as a musician, except in specifically Jewish contexts. But even to do that, he needed a permit from a Nazi-established, Jewish-run organization. It was in quest of this permit that he arrived at the Salomon household, where Paula Lindberg was supposed to test his abilities. Entranced with Lindberg, and seeking a way to redeem himself from failure, Wolfsohn/Daberlohn resolves (as Salomon tells it) to make Lindberg into "the greatest of all singers" and win her love. A thin man with horn-rimmed glasses and an unruly halo of curly dark hair, Wolfsohn is depicted as a Jung-inspired thinker who believes "geniuses can be created" by the artist getting in touch with his or her inner self. He is also quoted as speaking of a coming androgyny which, he believes, will have "an astounding impact" on human art and society. The reader of Life or Theater? is treated to the long debates Daberlohn/Wolfsohn has with himself as to his true intentions toward Paulinka and even longer discussions between Daberlohn and Paulinka. (The relationship between the two remained platonic.)

In 1938, Salomon, who fell in love with Wolfsohn, depicted him in an etching titled The Prophet. One gouache shows Daberlohn/Wolfsohn returning the compliment by predicting that Charlotte is "destined to create something above average." The section of Life or Theater? which covers their relationship powerfully conveys the emotional upheavals of early love. Salomon follows her youthful alter ego through infatuation, rejection and ecstasy. It is unclear whether Salomon and Wolfsohn became lovers--a number of pages show them embracing while leaving vague the extent of their physical intimacy--but theirs was clearly an intense, passionate relationship. During her second year of art school, Salomon frequently met Wolfsohn, often in secret, and absorbed many of his ideas. On one level, Life or Theater? is a platform she has created in order to present his theories. To do so, she will paint his face or body over and over again, as she writes out the texts of his pronouncements. In a fourpage depiction of him analyzing some of her paintings, Salomon fills each sheet with around 60 orange busts of Daberlohn/Wolfsohn. Underneath the rows of pumpkin-colored effigies runs a text containing observations such as: "My discovery of the similarity between what young girls produce and what certain geniuses produce is completely justified." One gets the sense that, while she may have initially worshiped Wolfsohn, by the time she painted Life or Theater?, Salomon was taking some of his pontificating with a grain of salt. And yet Salomon's vision of the artist's task was inseparable from the lessons she learned from Wolfsohn. She shows us Lindberg delivering an especially powerful singing performance after her exposure to Daberlohn/Wolfsohn's teachings. And, when he observes that "the emotional life of the singer must suffer a great upheaval to enable that singer to achieve exceptional results," it's hard not to think of Salomon herself and the "exceptional results" of her epic.