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

Art in America, Jan, 1999 by Raphael Rubinstein

For all its visual invention and energy, Life Or Theater? is an emphatically textual work. Indeed, it may be the most heavily textual art work of the 20th-century prior to the advent of Conceptual art. In addition to the many long monologues, Salomon at one point interrupts her narrative to introduce a long extract from Daberlohn/Wolfsohn's philosophical treatise Orpheus, or The Way to a Mask. We literally read over the author's shoulder, as Salomon portrays him turning the pages of his thick manuscript. As is true of every image in Life or Theater?, these pages of vatic text present the reader with another important piece of Salomon's story. Here, we learn how Wolfsohn has been inspired by Salomon and we also see aspects of his teachings that she will later apply to her masterpiece.

The Nazi attacks on Jews accelerated in 1938, culminating in Kristallnacht of Nov. 9, 1938. The following day, Charlotte's father, along with thousands of other German Jews, was arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen labor camp. As the level of persecution rises, Salomon alters her style, and not only for explicitly brutal scenes such as those of her imprisoned father with a Nazi guard standing over him. After Albert's arrest, the previously limpid, Dufyesque colors of Life or Theater? turn muddy, carefully thought-out compositions give way to rapidly brushed-in figures and detailed backgrounds are jettisoned in favor of stark, often unpainted grounds. Even the lettering style changes, coming more and more to resemble hastily scrawled graffiti. One gets the sense that time is running out for the Jews of Berlin, just as it was running out for Salomon herself as she persevered with her thousand images.

In one image following her father's arrest, Salomon shows herself in drab-colored clothes, her hands joined in supplication, her eyes downcast. The words that fly around her read: "I can't take this life any more, I can't take these times."

Paula was able to win Albert Salomon's release, but it was now clear to the Salomon family that they had to escape Germany. Taking advantage of the fact that she was under 22 and could travel without a passport, Charlotte left first, joining her grandparents in France in January 1939. A month later, Albert and Paula fled to Amsterdam. The main section ends with scenes, painted mostly in dark greens and grays, showing Charlotte's departure from Berlin. Her parents and Daberlohn/Wolfsohn accompany her to the station. In contrast to the endlessly unrolling speeches in the preceding pages, there is almost no text in the last panels. The final image of the main section shows Paula asking Daberlohn/Wolfsohn his opinion of the departed Charlotte. "Highly favorable," is his judgment, and we wonder whether this comment was reported to Salomon or if it simply represents the approval she hoped was hers.

On the Cote d'Azur, Salomon's elderly grandparents had come under the protection of a wealthy American expatriate, Ottilie Moore. Upon her arrival, Salomon joined them at the Villa l'Ermitage in Villefranche, where Moore had been living since 1928. For the first few pages of the epilogue, which picks up the story with Salomon's arrival in France, grim Berlin seems to have been left far behind. We see Salomon, dressed in a blue swimsuit or girlish skirt and blouse, dining al fresco with her elderly grandparents or enjoying herself by sketching on a terrace above the blue Mediterranean. This apparent idyll is, however, short-lived. A few panels later, the sun-drenched seaside scenes are replaced by a series of bleak images as harrowing as anything in the entire work.