Charlotte Salomon Leben? oder Theater?

Dr. Elisabeth Böhm Universität Bayreuth

GSAA Conference 2014 The Foreign and the Self– Das Eigene und das Fremde

Charlotte Salomon Leben? oder Theater?

o Leben? oder Theater?

o Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

o Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

Leben? oder Theater?

• Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)

• exile in France

• more than 800 gouaches

• wrapped and addressed to her hostess

• displayed at Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam

• several presentations and editions

• adaptations for theatre, opera and performance

Leben? oder Theater?

• Genre “Singespiel”

• prologue and epilogue

• “Vorspiel”, “Hauptteil” and “Nachspiel” divided in acts and scenes

• painted story of Charlotte’s family, focusing on her biography

• ‘therapeutic’ function of the work explicitly mentioned

Leben? oder Theater?

Charlotte Salomon’s Leben? oder Theater? confronts each scholar working on it with the question of self and/ or foreign on several levels:

drama – painted story – written narrative comments autobiography – modern aesthetics – theory of art

female voice – Jewish background – bourgeois way of live exile – German language and cultural traditions

melodies: opera, cantata, modern songs, invented titles Need for an interdisciplinary analytic approach to describe techniques of representation and perspectivization AND a critical reflection of historical and cultural circumstances

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• “Dreifarbensingespiel”: yellow, red and blue (plus black and white)

• framing written text, explanation of the ‘project’

• gouaches plus transparents holding the spoken words of the figures, narratorial comments, melodies mentioned

• despite the private production Leben? oder Theater? seems finished – hybrid yet rounded

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• Becoming-of-age-story / autobiography of a young female artist/ painter

• modernist style with resemblances e.g. to Expressionism

• many pictorial and/ or stylistic quotations

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• some pictures present a figure’s point of view/ perception: Während an seinem Gesicht herumgearbeitet wird, geht in seinem Inneren folgendes vor: Es ist eine durchaus farbig-musikalische Stimmung, die ihn beherrscht. Aus wirren Linien und Gewinden entsteht eine Theatermaske Paulinkas. (written comment to go with the gouache)

• pictorial quotation (Munch: Eva Mudocci) adds another commentary level

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• narrative pictures • dynamic perspective • events and passing of time • Melody going/ imagined with

the gouache either indicating/ creating atmosphere (narratorial evaluation) or marking a figure’s point of view

• narrative comments: situating the scene, summarizing the storyline, evaluation and perspectivization

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• Representational techniques inspired by graphic novel/ comic and movie/ cinema: sequentiality, zoom, spoken words

• dynamic perspectivization and mulitperspectivity

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• perception within pictures vs. perception of the pictures

• all different sign-systems (colour, image, spoken words, written words, narratorial comments, melodies) are used on several narratorial levels (figural point of view, setting, symbolizing, evaluation)

Aesthetics, narrativity and theatricality of Leben? oder Theater?

• words take over an illustrative function

• dynamic relation between events, figures and concepts established within the diegesis (destabilizing the fixed polarity between sameness and difference – A. Schmetterling) corresponds with the dynamic relation between sign-systems – they are being played with

Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

• multimodality of gouaches: images, words, melodies no fixed functions linked to the different sign-systems

• mulitmediality of representational techniques and forms: Singespiel/ theatre, cinema, graphic novel, autobiography, Bildungs- / Künstlerroman, pictorial quotations …

• personal identity staged as both performative and transitory construction shaped by established, popular and modern cultural models and artistic forms

Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

• Theatricality: ability to import all signs of the surrounding cultural system and to use them in different ways (semiotics of theatre) making representation visible public art: shared concept of theatre and its audience

• theatrical genre “Singespiel” includes all levels and forms and integrates all of them as devises to play with as well as identity as a performative process of quoting and combining different models and forms in order to gain individuality beyond predominant attributions

Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

• “Der Mensch” who is introduced as painter and narrator in the epilogue can be understood as ‘result’ of the process represented by the whole of Leben? oder Theater?

• Charlotte Kann has become ‘ein Mensch’ – more than just or only female, jewish, bourgeoise, painter – she shares and represents one version of the modern ‘Conditio Humana’ which is an imagination, staged by culture – and formed by art as well as by trauma

Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

• polyvalence of ‘theatre’: mise en scène, playfulness, (over)dramaticalisation (D. Buerkle), artificial/ cultural form, public art – framing genre, mode of (meta)representation, performantive aesthetics

• the experience in the painted “Singespiel” and the process of producing it result in one human being sitting, painting, looking at the sea: the individual facing the open and infinite

Multimodal reading of Leben? oder Theater?

• core scene of modern art and an old image of individual identity

• the question of self and/ or foreign is left behind – Leben oder Theater is on the figure‘s back – some kind of stigma but without question mark (re-entry)

• the painting within the painting is framed but transparent

Charlotte Salomon: Leben? oder Theater?

Literature

• Hajo Diekmannshenke et al. (eds.). 2011. Bildlinguistik. Theorien – Methoden – Fallbeispiele. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. • André Eiermann. 2009. Postspektakuläres Theater. Die Alterität der Aufführung und die Entgrenzung der Künste.

Bielefeld: transcript. • Keir Elam. 2002. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. 2nd edition. London/ New York: Routledge. • Alison Gibbons. 2012. Multimodality, Cognition and Experimental Literature. New York/ London: Routledge. • Carey Jewitt (ed.). 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London/ New York: Routledge. • Sabine Rohlf. 2002. Exil als Praxis – Heimatlosigkeit als Perspektive? München: edition text + kritik. • Charlotte Salomon. Leben? oder Theater? URL: http://www.jhm.nl/collection/specials/charlotte-salomon/leben-

oder-theater (18.11.2014). • Astrid Schmetterling. 2001. Charlotte Salomon. Bilder eines Lebens. Frankfurt a.M.: Jüdischer Verlag. • Henri Schoenmakers et al. (eds.). 2008. Theater und Medien – Theatre and the Media. Bielefeld: transcript 2008. • Michael P. Steinberg/ Monica Bohm-Duchen (eds.). 2006. Reading Charlotte Salomon. Ithaca/ London: Cornell

University Press. • Edward van Voolen (ed.). 2004. Charlotte Salomon Leben? Oder Theater?. Munich et al.: Prestel. • Sonja Zeman. 2011. “›Grammaticalization‹ within pictorial art? Searching for diachronic principles of change in

picture and language.” In: Image 14 (2011). URL: http://www.gib.uni-tuebingen.de/image/ausgaben-3?function=fnArticle&showArticle=193 (12.11.2014).