Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Salomon subtitled "Life? or Theatre?" as "Ein Singespiel," referencing the use of music and operatic structure of her work. [Click to enlarge]

With an event so enormous in scope and impact as the Holocaust, it's often difficult to successfully internalize it.

It's an event that has defined the modern world, an event so catastrophic and seemingly out of our grasp that a great deal of research is still being done on the subject.

Part of the difficulty seems to stem from the fact that the Holocaust is always referenced in a vacuum, while the circumstances leading up to it and during it certainly weren't.

Finding a piece of this story, something personal to identify with in the sea of suffering, is truly the challenge for anyone to begin to make sense of it.

This was the goal of the lecture, "Understanding Cultural Memory: The Legacy of Charlotte Salomon" held on Mar. 11, in Warren Auditorium.

The lecture was part of the ongoing Sociology 305 class, "Perspectives on the Holocaust and Genocide" that offers insight to the pathology and effects that the Holocaust has left behind on the world.

The lecture, given by Dr.. Paula Birnbaum from the University of San Francisco, aimed to shed light on how art and culture has responded to the events of the Holocaust.

Dr.. Birnbaum centered the lecture on the life work of German-Jewish artist, Charlotte Salomon, whose massive collection of watercolors (gouaches) has been a defining work both in art and history.

Salomon's sprawling opus is titled, "Life? or Theatre?," a riveting collection of about 769 paintings that blend her real life tragedies, alongside the hysteria that ensued during World War II.

Using full use of the canvas, Salomon's work finds her grasping for a place in the world, one where her troubled family life is as unstable as the political ascension of the Nazi party in Europe.

It's a mini story of sorts, with Salomon basing characters off real-life family members as well as wrestling with the themes of absurdity of life and the will to live through such atrocities.

Continued...

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