Charlotte Salomon and the Theatre of Memory

An enlightening and overdue re-evaluation of the masterwork of a complex and under-appreciated artist
Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) is renowned for a single, monumental, modernist artwork, Life? or Theatre? (Leben? oder Theater?), comprising 784 paintings and created between 1941 and 1942. This major art-historical study sheds new light on the remarkable combination of image, text and music, revealing Salomon's wealth of references to cinema, opera, Berlin cabaret, and the painter's self-consciously deployed modernist engagements with artists such as Van Gogh, Munch and Kollwitz. Additionally, Pollock draws attention to affinities in Salomon's work with that of others who shared her experience of statelessness and menaced exile in Nazi-dominated Europe, including Hannah Arendt, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin. In a reading informed by a rich range of insights originating in feminist theories of subjectivity, story-telling, memory, and trauma, Pollock confronts shocking new evidence of the extremity of the young artist's last few months, and discovers in Leben? oder Theater? profound testimony to the everyday crime of familial sexual abuse of women. Through her comprehensive research and many years of observation of the paintings, Griselda Pollock's account claims for this impressive and important work its rightful place in the art of the 20th century.

About the author

Griselda Pollock is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art at the University of Leeds, where she is also Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History (CATH).Joyce Zemans is an art historian and curator. She is a University Professor and Director of the MBA Program in Arts and Media Administration at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto.

Summary

An enlightening and overdue re-evaluation of the masterwork of a complex and under-appreciated artist

Product details

• Authors: Griselda Pollock
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 02.03.2018
• EAN: 9780300100723
• ISBN: 978-0-300-10072-3
• No. of pages: 544
• Dimensions: 200 mm x 260 mm x 48 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; Kunstgeschichte, 20. Jahrhundert (1900 bis 1999 n. Chr.), einzelne Künstler, Künstlermonografien, Malerei und Gemälde, ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), ART / Individual Artists / Monographs, Biography: arts & entertainment, History of Art, History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -, Painting & paintings, Individual artists, art monographs, Biography: arts and entertainment, Paintings and painting