Sunday, March 29, 2015

Leben? oder Theater?


The individual story, as always, brings home the general history. Even more so, when that story has been expressed in an extraordinary way. This is true of Agnes’ jacket, a straightjacket of a woman in an asylum in the 1890’s, who could only express herself by embroidering words and phrases onto her jacket. Heartrending.
During the last 2 years of exile in France before she was deported, Charlotte Salomon wrote and painted her life in an amazingly touching pictorial story called Leben? oder Theater? The Jewish History Museum in Amsterdam had it published in a voluminous tome, which has sucked me in in its intensity, in its compelling power.