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Book reviews

Charlotte Salomon - Life? Or Theatre?

9/11/2020

 
Picture
This summer, I visited an exhibition on this work by Charlotte Salomon and was intrigued. I've never read a multimedial, multidimensional work like this before - it's like a graphic novel, but with music as a third medium added to it. And it truly is a masterpiece.

I especially loved the prologue, since that's the part where the paintings and the transparent overlays are equally artistic. The main part is more like what we know as a classic graphic novel today.

Life? Or Theatre? is a very passionate peace of art. Through the paintings and transparencies, and references to music, Charlotte tells about her family history, which is signed by many suicides. She tells about what art (her stepmother was a singer, Charlotte herself started painting at young age) meant to her, about an obsessive love affair, the start of the Second World War, and her escape to Southern France where she was eventually captured and deported to Auschwitz in 1943.
This summer, I visited an exhibition on this work by Charlotte Salomon and was intrigued. I've never read a multimedial, multidimensional work like this before - it's like a graphic novel, but with music as a third medium added to it. And it truly is a masterpiece.

I especially loved the prologue, since that's the part where the paintings and the transparent overlays are equally artistic. The main part is more like what we know as a classic graphic novel today.

Life? Or Theatre? is a very passionate peace of art. Through the paintings and transparencies, and references to music, Charlotte tells about her family history, which is signed by many suicides. She tells about what art (her stepmother was a singer, Charlotte herself started painting at young age) meant to her, about an obsessive love affair, the start of the Second World War, and her escape to Southern France where she was eventually captured and deported to Auschwitz in 1943.


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