Memory and Experience: Exiled Jewish Artists in Vichy France During World War II

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Special thanks to: COSO & The Provost Office

the collegiate Journal of ArtA Dartmouth undergraduate Publication

co-editors in chief:Virginia Deaton & Anna Dev

5cJAhieronymus bosch’s lisbon temptation of St. Anthony: the iconography of illness and Devotionnicole conti, middlebury college pages 6 - 17

empty Sleeves and loyal Specters: Post civil War reconciliation in Popular cultureVirginia Deaton, Dartmouth college pages 18 - 29

memory and experience: exiled Jewish Artists in Vichy France during World War iiraina Fox, macalester college pages 30 - 45

rethinking identity: the Photography of nikki S. leerenee mikon, university of michigan pages 46 - 53

Exhibitions list of upcoming exhibitions at university museums pages 54 - 59

Felix de la Concha’s Multimedial Portraiture: a Vehicle for Understanding Conflict and reconciliation, maria Fillas, Dartmouth college pages 60 - 63

Picasso and the Allure of language, cynthia Zhou, Dartmouth college pages 64 -66

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Memory and Experience: Exiled Jewish Artists in Vichy France during World War II

By Raina Fox, Macalester College

When the nazi-collaborating Vichy government (1940-44) took over France during World War ii, many Jewish artists were forced to the country’s southern unoccupied zone to avoid persecution. Jewish artists of eastern european origin such as marc chagall (1887-1985) and chaim Soutine (1893-1943), who had been part of the rising modernist art scene in Paris in the 1920’s and 1930’s, relocated to unoccupied territory where they could work and live without the same level of discrimination they had endured in the north. other Jewish artists from elsewhere in europe, such as berlin native charlotte Salomon (1917-1944), also moved to safety in Southern France. in exile, many of these artists produced works that comment on the tension, fear, and suffering they experienced as Jews in Western europe during the war.

these images are rarely grouped to reveal their similar themes, but when analyzed in relation to one another, the paintings of chagall, Soutine, and Salomon capture the fear, anxiety, and violence many Jews experienced, and so force reconsideration and a new appreciation of the years of persecution Jews suffered in europe during World War ii. marc chagall is well known for his nostalgic and religiously-inspired paintings that often draw on his Jewish heritage. colorful images of joy and optimism with frequent references to his childhood, these paintings were frequently criticized for being escapist and for shying away from the political and social developments that surrounded chagall during his early years in russia and nazi occupied France. chagall came to France

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from Vitebsk, belarus—at that time part of the russian empire—in pursuit of artistic education. Vitebsk was a stronghold of hassidic Judaism, a movement that originated in eighteenth century belarus and ukraine in reaction to what was perceived as “elitist intellectualism” and talmudic Judaism, instead encouraging free expression of spirituality and communal love and joy. even many years after leaving Vitiebsk, chagall continued to incorporate images of Jewish people dancing, singing and performing religious activities, defining art itself as “a state of the soul.” chagall had already begun to experience persecution as a Jew in russia, beginning with his arrival in Saint Petersburg to study art. because he had not obtained the obligatory permit required of Jews at that time to reside in the capital, he lived there illegally and was jailed briefly before moving to Paris in August of 1910. in Paris, chagall had somewhat more freedom and connected almost immediately with the vibrant modern art scene that challenged him to explore a new artistic style. Despite his new environment, he remained intensely aware of his identity as a Jew and sensitive to the social injustice he endured firsthand both in russia and France. he returned to russia in 1914 to marry and participate in the russian revolution, but the anti-Semitism he experienced in the movement sent him back to Western europe and Paris in 1922. While in France, chagall’s style changed significantly, becoming lighter and more colorful as a result of the dynamic

artistic community around him. in paintings such as Paris through the Window (1913) and birthday (1923) chagall incorporates the influence of his contemporaries such as robert Delaunay, chaim Soutine, and henri matisse. chagall commented on this transition, “in russia my pictures were without light. everything in russia is dark, brown, gray. Arriving in France, i was struck by the iridescence of color, the play of lights, and i found what i had been blindly seeking, that refinement of the paint and of wanton color.” During the 1910’s and1920’s, modernism was in full swing in Paris, with impressionism, expressionism, fauvism, cubism, and rayonism filling exhibition halls and galleries. chagall enthusiastically engaged in many of these techniques, producing numerous works that explored new formal innovations, rather than focusing on the more troubling social issues of the day. This world of superficial joy fell apart with the outbreak of World War ii. on June 22, 1940, an Armistice agreement between germany and France was signed, dividing France into occupied and unoccupied zones. germany would occupy northern and Western zones of France, including Paris, while the unoccupied Southern “free zone,” would be governed by the French under Vichy control. Although supposedly independent, the Vichy government was required to turn over to german custody “undesirables” such as Jews, immigrants, or communists. in the north, the german Wehrmacht implemented more radical

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raina Fox, memory and experience

policies. on one night alone in August 1941, thirty-two hundred foreign and one thousand French Jews were rounded up in Paris, and taken to Drancy internment camp. Feeling the anxiety of being a Jew in Paris, shortly before the invasion chagall moved to Saint Dye-Sur-loire in the South of France, taking with him all the paintings from his Paris studio. though Chagall did not experience firsthand the horrors of deportation, his work from this period conveys the tension and fear of fellow Jews who had lost their lives and families. One of his first responses to the war is illustrated in the burning Village (1940) in this work, chagall returns to the memories of pogroms and other horrifying events he witnessed and was aware of as a young man in russia. however, he recasts these memories in a new context by symbolically alluding to his surroundings in the South of France. the burning Village shows a dramatically explosive red and orange canvas, with a family running away from their fiery homes. Although he seems to paint the destruction of his russian village home, chagall uses the village as a substitute for the home he left behind in occupied Paris, revealing fear for the Jewish people as a whole. chagall continues to address this sense of anxiety for his fellow Jews throughout the war, using both religious and secular imagery. chagall was deeply connected to Judaism and frequently employed religious themes in his art. As a Jew, chagall had to

deal with a particular hurdle: how to address Jewish views and beliefs concerning art? For hundreds of years, Jewish artists have struggled with the question of how to represent their beliefs in art without breaking the rules of the ten commandments, which state, “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything.” throughout history, orthodox Jews restricted themselves to decorating torah covers or producing other religious artifacts such as menorahs and havdalah spice boxes. though orthodox Jewish artists rarely depicted figurative imagery or biblical characters, chagall, like many Jewish modernist artists, decided to move away from this tradition. he endeavored to invent a language that would enable him to express religious subjects and to capture his experience and identity as a Jew at different historical moments. chagall addressed this issue provocatively through the image of crucifixion, which, in his work, becomes an allegory for suffering and terror not restricted to Christians. Chagall first applied the image of crucifixion in his painting golgotha (1912). he returned to this subject in 1938 while still in Paris, in his renowned White Crucifixion which, as chagall explained, was his “reaction to the persecution of Jews by the national Socialists.” Although the nazis had not yet reached France, chagall well understood the socio-political situation that was unraveling in europe. in 1937, the nazis began to remove works made by modernist

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artists from german museums, banning them on the grounds that such art was un-german or Jewish bolshevist, identifying these artists as “degenerate.” they seized and dispatched more than twelve-hundred works of art from the museum Folkwang in essen alone, including paintings by marc chagall, such as Purim (1916-18). in the same year, the nazis mounted the infamous Degenerate Art Show (entartete Kunst) in munich, where they hung hundreds of modernist works together with derogatory labels meant to deride and ridicule the art object and the work of the artist. Feeling similar sentiments rising in France, chagall created White Crucifixion, in part, as a commentary on these events. In White Crucifixion, Christ on the cross represents not a christian icon but a suffering Jew in France, full of fear and confusion as the nazi invasion approached. christ hangs peacefully on a t-shaped cross in the center of the composition, with a beam of light illuminating his body, the loincloth, which strongly resembles a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, and the hebrew words inscribed on the cross. under christ’s feet sits a seven-branched menorah, creating a circle of light visually echoing the halo behind christ’s head. in this way, the light of christ and the light of the menorah become one -- a symbol of religious holiness within a Jewish context. chaos surrounds this relatively peaceful image of christ: a torah is on fire, a house burns down, a blazing synagogue is attacked by a brown-shirted nazi, communist soldiers rush over the hill

holding a red flag -- a reminder of Chagall’s experiences during both the revolution and Pogroms in russia. Art historian Andrew Kagan in his 1989 book chagall comments that this plethora of Jewish images in a christian setting indicates that White Crucifixion “is not a Christian image of christ but a distinctly Jewish one, in which christ’s identity as a Jew is emphasized above all.” the poor Jew on the bottom left wears a ritual breast cloth, originally bearing the legend “i am a Jew” in german. this corresponds with the traditional inscription on the crucifix, “Jesus Christ, King of the Jews,” which here appears both in hebrew and latin. chagall later painted over these words, deciding that they were too literal and exaggerated his rather obvious theme of Jewish suffering, a theme he saw paralleled in the 1930s and throughout history. As tensions and anti-Semitism in europe escalated, chagall’s awareness of the danger increased. by December 1940, almost forty seven hundred yellow placards adorned Jewish places of commerce in Paris to warn visitors of their owner’s religious identity, encouraging anti-Semitism and inspiring violent outbursts of window smashing and hostility. the French national press rejoiced, proclaiming “israel can pretend all it wants not to understand nor see the truth: France no longer belongs to it. This fiefdom that it had held for hundreds of years is slipping out of its crooked hands: none of the efforts and tricks it is using to try to mask its veritable origins are working any more.” Feeling this growing and violent

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anti-Semitism, chagall and his family moved to gordes-- located in the South of France-- in 1940, where he would be “far removed from the border with germany” . in this year he painted another powerful image of crucifixion, The Martyr (1940) (Figure 5), this time with a Jew hanging on a stake in the place of Jesus on the cross. the victimized Jewish man in the martyr recalls the christ of White Crucifixion, wrapped in a Tallit-like garment and bound by the leather Teffilin (phylacteries). behind him lies his village, erupting into flames, and out of the sky fall a goat and chicken, animals traditionally associated with sacrifice in ancient Jewish ritual. in the lower right hand corner a man recites the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish. A boy behind him clasps his hat as he looks on in confusion and fear. People throw chairs, furniture, and themselves out of windows. the only calm face in the painting is that of the martyr himself. This figure becomes connected with the idea of the martyred artist, with whom Chagall identified and yet about whom he felt guilty. in 1950, long after he had left gordes, chagall wrote a poem titled “to the martyred Artists”, in which he expressed sadness and guilt for the violence around him that he was able to avoid. recalling the eighty or more Jewish artists who died during the war, he laments: they call me. they drag me into theirpit—me, the innocent—the guilty.they ask me: “where were you?”i ran away…

they were taken to the death baths… in 1941, the same year the nazis began to require Jews to wear the yellow stars that marked them as Jewish, chagall’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their status as naturalized French citizens. As a result of such developing anti-Semitic acts by the Vichy government, chagall decided to move to the united States. After chagall escaped France for the united States, he continued to use imagery of crucifixion and other religious symbols-- the remnants of a powerfully traumatic memory of the europe he left behind. in the 1940s, he began to incorporate the image of a splayed cow, symbolizing the trauma caused by anti-Semitic persecution in occupied France and the mass murders of Jews in europe. through the Flayed ox (1947) chagall uses the splayed cow as a symbol for the loss of innocent Jewish lives as well as the europe he remembers. his friend lionello Venturi wrote of this shift in chagall’s art in the 1940’s: “the pity he has always felt for his people has become, because of the present war, a catastrophic vision of all mankind.” in the Flayed ox, chagall depicts an ox hanging upside-down from a piece of wood, ribs exposed and innards spilling out of an open wound. the ox’s tongue falls limply out of its mouth, appearing to lick the bucket of blood directly below. here, the calf clearly represents the destruction of the innocent Jewish people during the holocaust, a symbol further illustrated by the village and its occupants. the icy blue of the snow-covered town

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suggests an emptiness-- indeed, the only figures present are a shocked looking man, whose head appears in the crux of a roof, a frightened old woman whose face floats on the roof’s side, and a horrified looking man flying above. Houses in the back left are alight in flame, sending wisps of smoke into the air, and an oddly personified clock appears in a window on the bottom right, with an arm-like scarf reaching out the window towards the ground. time, represented by the clock, seems to mourn the loss of the crucified ox, showing the hour to be somewhere between ten at night and one in the morning. the time on the clock and the dark sky hint at Kristallnacht, a symbolically brutal pogrom in 1938 that haunted chagall and appears in many of his paintings. chagall depicts the open body of the ox as a raw and disturbing image of death that confronts the viewer, revealing not only the insides of the animal but also painful anger and awareness of the exposed nature of the victimized creature. upon seeing this painting after the holocaust, the President of the State of israel, Zalman Shazar, commented that the calf, hanging as a crucifix over the city, represents “the evil of a living creature wield[ing] its power over another living creature. See how the red of its blood screams, see the brutal cut in its body split in two, see the purity of its face licking from the bowl-- does another crucified like this exist among all the crucifieds?” Chagall’s guilt at leaving France and feelings of repulsion culminate

in the Flayed ox, bringing together his use of the crucifix as a symbol of martyrdom and his experience in occupied France. though chagall was able to escape the concentration camps and many of the horrors of nazi-occupied France, the trauma he reveals in his paintings exposes the dark memories and guilt he carried with him the rest of his life. in a similar way to chagall, chaim Soutine, another eastern european Jewish artist residing in France in the early modernist period leading up to World War ii, explored the fear and isolation of living in unoccupied but still Nazi-influenced Southern France. like chagall, Soutine was born in belarus, grew up in the Jewish hassidic tradition and was rejected by members of his village on religious grounds. After moving to Paris in 1913 with the goal of pursuing artistic education, Soutine found a place within the modernist circle that included his compatriot marc chagall. one of his more famous early works, which later inspired chagall’s painting of the Flayed ox, was carcass of beef (1925). here, Soutine’s characteristic aesthetic vigor and rawness emerge, perhaps revealing the guilt he felt for violating Jewish artistic restrictions and the self-consciousness he experienced as a Jew in Paris. on September 3, 1939, the war and escalating anti-Semitism forced Soutine and his companion, mademoiselle. gerda Groth, to flee Paris to stay with friends in civry, a small village in the South of France. During Soutine’s period of exile, the fear

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and violence of nazi occupation greatly affected his creative style. While chagall’s work of the period draws on overt symbols of suffering, Soutine’s seemingly innocuous imagery veils the tension, helplessness, and horror that Soutine and many Jewish families hiding in unoccupied France experienced. these emotions come through in his work from this period, especially in paintings such as return from School After the Storm of 1939.

return from School After the Storm expresses the anxiety of being a Jew in hiding from the nazis through its vertiginous and isolating landscape. Soutine’s rawness, characteristic of earlier work, emerges here in sharp brushstrokes while the overall tone of the composition shifts to uneasiness. two children dressed in black make their way under a cloudy sky on a path leading out of a dark forest. the horizon line is uncomfortably slanted,


chaim Soutine, Return from School After the Storm, 1939, oil on canvas, 43.2 x 49.5 cm, courtesy of the Phillips collection,

Washington

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striking an odd contrast with the path’s perfect straightness. this expressionistic landscape seems to show less of a real scene than a somber mood or inner feeling. curator norman l. Kleeblatt and Professor Kenneth e. Silver argue in An expressionist in Paris: the Paintings of chaim Soutine that the painter’s “eruptive, vertiginous landscapes [can] be constructed as recollections of a ravaged europe or even as the foreshadowing of an apocalyptic post-atomic future.” Soutine’s painterly

expression of loss, fear, and vertigo reveals hopelessness for a world out of his control. his preoccupation with this theme comes through in his frequent depiction of a pair of children walking in a tumultuous landscape, as in Windy Day, Auxerre (1939) and children on a road (1939) from this same period. Also like chagall, Soutine could not escape the horrors of being a Jew in nazi-occupied France. on may 15, 1941, Soutine’s companion, mme. groth, was rounded up by the germans and taken to a concentration camp at gurs. Soutine narrowly escaped arrest by the gestapo in Paris in June 1941, but because of inadequate documentation and a series of misunderstandings he was unable to reach the united States, despite the efforts of friends to obtain an invitation for him. instead, he settled in unoccupied France at champigny-sur-Vende in touraine, where he was more or less tolerated by the local villagers. however, war and the persecution of the Jews continued to feed his all-too-real apprehensions. What had been a vague feeling of fear and uneasiness as exemplified in his return from School After the Storm now became real and immediate. in addition, his health was beginning to fail him in the form of a stomach ulcer, putting him in the difficult position of needing medical help from doctors in Paris but being unable to receive it because of the dangers of travel. this sense of isolation and helplessness comes through in girl at Fence (1942). girl at Fence displays the

charlotte Salomon, Life? Or Theater?, the image is taken from the book written by charlotte Salomon, “life? or theater?”

Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Jewish historical museum, Amsterdam. 2006.

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uncertainty and confinement Soutine felt being exiled in the South of France, as well as the suffering and lack of freedom Jews were experiencing throughout europe. A young girl leans against a fence directly barring her from the viewer, turning her head into her arm as if crying. her eyebrows seem furrowed and she grasps her hands together over the fence in our direction in an expression of pain and pleading. behind the girl, the earth tilts to one side (a common motif in Soutine’s later work), covered along the horizon line by a row of trees that art historian, monroe Wheeler compares to prison bars. A fence divides the child from us, further creating a sense of imprisonment. the work itself contains a mixture of sadness and pain, which Soutine must have experienced after the arrest of his companion mme groth. though he died before ever being caught by the nazis, Soutine’s paintings from this period in hiding capture his anxiety, confinement, and fear of a world out of control, reflecting the unease of other Jews from all over europe. one such artist was the german-born charlotte Salomon. by combining symbolism with memory, charlotte Salomon creates powerful works that capture not only her personal plight, but try to render what it meant to be a Jew during the War in europe. A native of berlin, Salomon lived outside of Paris during her early artistic career and was greatly influenced by modernist trends developing there in the early 20th century. She knew of and was influenced

by the work of chagall and Soutine, inspiration particularly visible in her gouaches, which pick up on the painterly vigor, fusion of different modernist styles, and bright use of colors that typify the work of these male artists. At the same time, the nazis were working to suppress these modernist techniques, just as she herself was being restrained as a Jew. When the nazis came to power in germany in 1933, life became very difficult for Salomon’s family. her grandparents decided to leave Germany, her father was fired from Berlin university’s medical School and thrown into a concentration camp, her stepmother, a singer, was banned from the public stage, and in 1938 Salomon herself was expelled from the State Art Academy of berlin. in 1939, Salomon left germany and joined her grandparents in exile in a small village near nice. At that time, nearly forty thousand Jews had moved to the area around nice and marseilles. even though this area was part of the “free zone,” many of the Jews were hiding underground and many were arrested during massive operations carried out by both the german and French police. When Salomon came to the South of France, she arrived with a greater understanding of the dangers she would face and with direct knowledge of the nazi violence that her family members had already experienced. Salomon made her series of gouaches called life? or theater? (1940-1942) in the context of these experiences. using text, imagery, and various cinematic techniques life? or theater? consists of more than thirteen


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hundred individual gouache paintings that often mix close-up and bird’s-eye-view perspectives. the series depicts the life of Salomon’s alter ego who takes the viewer into her inner world as she experiences individual triumphs, love, anti-Semitism and loss against the backdrop of early twentieth century europe. For Salomon the work became an outlet to deal with complex and tragic events, as well as a way to creatively explore the meaning of what she saw around her. one image, number 4786 in the series, particularly captures the tension of living in a restricted society in which people struggle to maintain routine. the text reads: “i’ll go to the café. but there are signs all over the place there: no Jews Admitted. i’ll go just the same. it’s not that obvious that i’m Jewish.” cutting along from the bottom left corner toward the top right is a strong diagonal, dividing a pastel wall from a dark mass of people. the blue mass of figures seems to float on top of one another, anonymous and block-like against the clarity of the wall. Salomon’s text suggests that her experience as a Jew in this society is uncertain. charlotte the character says that it is “not obvious” she is Jewish, giving her the currency to become part of an anonymous crowd and continue her daily life. Yet this ambiguous human mass is solemn and dark, in danger and unsure. the dark throng of people contrasts with the paleness of the wall, emphasizing the divide between the anonymity people feel and the social normalcy they seek.

Furthermore, the diagonal subverts the feeling of comfort that a muted pastel pallet might convey. the atmospheric sense of this scene combined with the irony of the text suggests insight into the tone of Salomon’s surroundings: the tension of navigating between submissiveness and the potential freedom to “pass,” wanting a normal life but being prevented by surroundings, are all caught in both the imagery and words of this picture. though her ability to pass was uncertain, Salomon was very clear about the danger around her. Although Jews in unoccupied France had arrived with the intention of escaping anti-Semitism, hatred continued to build in the region. by 1941, a xenophobic Veteran’s legion was founded in nice attracting ten thousand supporters and enlisting six thousand locals . the legion’s displays of hatred towards Jews was overt, and would have been obvious to any artists living in the area-- including Salomon, Soutine and chagall. ceremonies to induce nazi support riled crowds in the streets: Are you against skepticism and for faith? Are you against democracy and for authority? All the SoS members: oui. . . . Against Jewish leprosy and for French purity?oui! Seeing the nazi threat all around her, Salomon utilizes it in her work in an attempt to understand the desire to suppress the Jews, reflecting her fear and attempt to bring reason to a world she cannot

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comprehend, a scene in which the nazis group together to build strength against the Jews reflects the impending terror that Salomon must have felt, (number 4305 in her series). A circle of blue figures flank a huge sign announcing nazi beliefs, their hatred and intentions for the Jews: “the Jew has made money from your blood, The Jewish bosses financed the World War. the Jew has deceived and betrayed you, so german men and women: take your revenge! once Jewish blood spurts from the knife, you’ll have by far a better life. hunt the swine until he sweats and smash the windowpanes to bits.” the sign is accompanied by a caricature of a Jewish man, complete with hooked nose and curly hair. A mass of blue and red figures cloud the background, filling the page. The entire composition tilts slightly toward the right, creating a sense that the whole image is about to slide off the page and beyond the artist’s control. Salomon fills her world with trepidation, exploring the nazi’s fear of Jews in an attempt to regain her own sense of control. Salomon employs the trope of theatricality as a metaphor for the artistic legacy she is creating through life? or Theater?, reflecting her desire to construct certainty, gain control and find hope where it is lacking. theatricality is so intrinsic to her series that it cannot be separated from the artwork itself. in addition to titling her series, life? or theater?, Salomon organizes her work like a play by creating actors, a textual script accompanying each image,

notes on the musical choice for each scene, and changing “Acts” and “Scenes.” in her article theater? curator Judith belinfante explains that Salomon builds an additional layering of the meaning of theater into her work. At certain points, characters choose to act out or put on a visage, taking on lucid dream-like control. in gauche number 4588, the character Daberlohn decides to have his own death mask made “in order to discover the nature of what determines the transition from life to death.” thus the creation of a mask—an alter ego much like the character charlotte in life? or theater?—becomes his way of exploring the ambiguous space between life and death, the uncertain realm that Salomon felt she had been floating in while in exile. Daberlohn’s decision to create a mask of himself (guache number 4594,) in order to discover the nature of truth inverts the role of actor and director: he is suddenly the creator of his own image, speaking to the mask to declare “i did not hold you to my face: you were lifted off of my face.” Art and theater become existential acts, things to be created as a way to gain immortality. indeed, mary Sherman describes Salomon as “obsessed with the idea that her art could remake its author; like a mask, the works could represent her-- act as some sort of proof of her existence, a means of outliving her death--and become for viewers and readers a leitmotif for understanding themselves.” Just like her character, who searches for the feeling of suspension between life and death through


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a mask representation of self, Salomon employs her series of paintings as a mask that will survive her own death. Art defies the dualism of life and death-- the mask, song, and paintings all exist as memorials over time. in September of 1943, Salomon and her husband were found by the gestapo and brought to Auschwitz concentration camp, where both were immediately killed. before leaving France, Salomon had managed to entrust her paintings to a family friend, with the plea to “keep this safe, it is my whole life” . in the end, this statement was true: Salomon’s work became her death mask, living on as a memorial to her individual self as well as her experience as a Jew in occupied europe. Salomon may have been the most overt about this goal, but chagall and Soutine also put faith in their art to live on after they died. chagall made this especially clear in writing the previously discussed “to the martyred Artists,” accepting responsibility for his fellow artists’ memories by “take[ing] the road to the new temple/ and there light[ing] a candle/ for your picture”. like Salomon, chagall and Soutine use their art to explore the experience of being a Jew in exile in unoccupied France, knowing that their work would live on after their death as a symbol of themselves and of other exiled Jews. As they attempted to depict the nazi occupied world in which they lived, chagall, Soutine, and Salomon struggled to portray the anti-Semitic oppression they

experienced, an effort that theoreticians such as theodor Adorno and Primo levi debated in their individual writings after World War ii. theodor Adorno famously “warns about the barbarism of writing [creating?] poetry after Auschwitz that warrants continued attention,” saying that no event as terrible as the holocaust can or should be aestheticized in any way that might weaken its power. time dims the power of history, so Adorno feared that if art alone remains to recognize the holocaust and nazi power, the immense horror of these events will diminish. Art and poetry become shaky realms which he feels cannot be used in dealing with the holocaust. Another key participant in this debate, Primo levi, a holocaust survivor, explains that “on many occasions, we survivors of the nazi concentration camps have come to notice how little use words are in describing our experiences” in a world full of images, and so pleads for a language “of this other world” which would allow for upfront, respectful, and honest memory. the debate about how art can render this kind of experience was addressed more recently by art historians Dora Apel and mike bal, who claim that the language of art is able to “illuminate traumatic experience through the sideways glance, allowing the viewer to apprehend what can only be shown indirectly, allusively and in sometimes surprising ways.” to Apel and bal, this kind of “indirect art” is perhaps the only way to create an effective memorial, an object that bypasses the need for explanation and instead pulls the

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referenced resources:

Alexander, Sidney. chagall. new York: g. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1978. Amishai-maisels, Ziva. “the Artist as refugee.” in Art and its uses, edited by ezra mendelsohn and richard i. cohen. new York: oxford university Press. 1990. Apel, Dora, memory effects: the holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing. new brunswick: rutgers university Press. 2002. Attie, Shimon. “the Writing on the Wall, berlin, 1992-93: Projections in berlin’s Jewish Quarter”. Art Journal. 62 no3 Fall. 2003. baal-teshuva, Jacob. chagall: A retrospective. hugh laughter levin Associates, inc. 1995. belinfante, Judith c. e. “theater? remarks on a work of art”. Salomon, charlotte life? or theater? Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Amsterdam: Jewish historical museum. 2006. bohm-Duchen, monica. “the uses and Abuses of Photography in holocaust-related Art”. hornstein, Shelley. ed. image and remembrance: representation and the holocaust. indianapolis: indiana university Press. 2003. chagall, marc. my life. cambridge: Da capo Press. 1994. cogniat, raymond. Soutine. new York, crown. 1973. compton, Susan. “chagall, marc”. the Dictionary of Art. Vol. 6. ed. Jane turner. 1996.

viewer into a space between memory and history and brings them closer to the state of emotion that they didn’t experience but can comprehend. marc chagall, chaim Soutine, and charlotte Salomon all attempted to straddle the divide between history and memory through their art, and together created a lasting memorial to Jewish experience in France during the nazi occupation of World War ii. marc chagall moves freely between the history he saw developing around him and a desire to honor it by showing suffering through symbols of crucifixion and martyrdom. Chaim Soutine captures the confinement and fear that he and others of the time experienced while in exile through psychologically charged painted landscapes. charlotte Salomon tries to contextualize her experience by stepping out of herself to create a work that would survive by combining history and memory. through the art of chagall, Soutine, and Salomon, the viewer can better understand the dangers of ignorance as people around the world continue to experience persecution, prejudice, fear, and uncertainty. by examining such issues through art of the past, we become better prepared to find and deal with the prejudice and genocide in our world today as expressed through art, poetry, writing, or any other creatively defined memorial.


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Essays


Dibosa, David. “Witness this: Art, memory, Democracy”. Parachute. no 111 88-97 Je/Jl/Ag 2003. ehrlich, J. W. the holy bible and the law. new York, oceana Publications. 1962. Fischer-Defoy, christine and Judith c. e. belinfante. 2006. “life: biography 1917-1943.” Salomon, charlotte life? or theater? Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Jewish historical museum, Amsterdam. Forge, Andrew. Soutine. london, Spring books. 1965 Friedman, mira. marc chagall’s Portrayal of the Prophet Jeremiah. Zeitschrift fur Kunnstgeschichte, 47 bd. h. 3. 374-391. 1984. guerman, mikhail. marc chagall. the land of my heart: russia. Parkstone/ Aurora editions. 1995. harshav, benjamin. the role of language in modern Art: on texts and Subtexts in chagall’s Paintings. modernism/modernity 1.2 51-87. the Johns hopkins university Press. http://0-muse.jhu.edu.clicnet4.clic.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/v001/1.2harshav.html 1994. hornstein, Shelley. ed. image and remembrance: representation and the holocaust. indianapolis: indiana university Press. 2003. Kagan, Andrew. chagall. new York: Abberville Press Publishers. 1989. Kampf, Avram. chagall to Kitaj: Jewish experience in 20th century Art. new York: Praeger Publishers. 1990.

Kleeblatt, norman l. and Kenneth e. Silver. An expressionist in Paris: the Paintings of chaim Soutine. new York: Prestel. 1998. lang, berel. “Second Sight: Shimon Attie’s recollection.” hornstein, Shelley. ed. image and remembrance: representation and the holocaust. indianapolis: indiana university Press. 2003. lassaigne, Jacques. marc chagall: the ceiling of the Paris opera. new York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers. 1966. leymarie, Jean. the Jerusalem Windows. new York. 1967. loock, A. c., et al. Summer “Art as Projective medium: An educational Psychological model to Address unresolved trauma in Young Adults” . education; Vol. 123 issue 4, 705, 9. 2003.lowenthal, mary. to Paint her life: charlotte Salomon in the nazi era. los Angeles: university of california Press, 1997. mann, Vivian b. Jewish texts on the Visual Arts. new York: cambridge university Press. 2000. marc chagall: Peintures recentes 1967-1977. musee du louvre. 1977. meyer, Franz. marc chagall: life and Work. harry n. Abrams, inc. Publishers new York. morgan, michael l. A holocaust reader: responses to the nazi extermination. new York: oxford university Press. 2001. Petersen, Ad. “leben? oder

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theater?: the history of the collection”. Salomon, charlotte life? or theater? Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Jewish historical museum, Amsterdam. 2006. Pollock, griselda. What does a Woman Want? Art investigating Death in charlotte Salomon’s leben? oder theater? Art history 30 (3) , 383–405 Polzanski, renee. Jews in France during World War ii: brandeis university Press in association with the united States holocaust memorial museum ; hanover, n.h. : university press of new england, 2001. rabinowitz, cay-Sophie. “Shimon Attie, christian boltanski, Joe nicastri: From rememberance to renewal.” contemporary Art center of Virginia, Virginia beach. Art Papers 22 no5 58 S/o ‘98. rosenthal, norman. “charlotte Salomon’s life? or theater?: A 20th century Song of innocence and experience”. Salomon, charlotte life? or theater? Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Jewish historical museum, Amsterdam. 2006. Salomon, charlotte. life? or theater? Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. Jewish historical museum, Amsterdam. 2006. Schneider, Daniel e. Winter, A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Painting of marc chagall. college Art Journal, Vol. 6, no. 2. 1946. Seltzer, mark. “Wound culture: trauma in the pathological public sphere”.

october; Spring 97 issue 80, mit Press. Sherman, mary. “charlotte Salomon and christian boltanski at the museum of Fine Arts, boston.” Art new england. no6 49-50 o/n 2000. Werner, Alfred. chagall’s Jerusalem Windows. Art Journal, Vol. 21, no. 4. Summer, 1962. Werner, Alfred. chaim Soutine. new York : h. n. Abrams, 1977. Wullschlager, Jackie. chagall a biography. new York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Zerner, elizabeth h. and robert t. bower. german occupation and Anti-Semitism in France. the Public opinion Quarterly. Vol. 12, no. 2. 1948.


Memory and Experience: Exiled Jewish Artists in Vichy France During World War II

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