Studying Salomon

By Zephaniah Malka

As my research into the work of Charlotte Salomon continues, I’ve found the most challenging hurdle so far is the amount of material that needs to be reviewed. I want my preliminary research to be thorough so that my final product does Salomon’s work justice. Fully reading through her piece Life? or Theatre? and creating studies based off of it has taken more time than I had originally anticipated. The work consists of over 700 gouache paintings with accompanying captions, dialogue, and music. Due to the nature of making work based off of this, I need to not only sufficiently summarize the story being told but also summarize the visuals. Through the grant, I have been able to afford one of the books compiling the work of Salomon for me to revisit. While I have been successful thus far, I am going to change my process moving forward to ensure I don’t run out of time. I am now going to be working in sections, developing video ideas more fully before moving onto the next segment of the story.

Another battle with time constraints during my preliminary research is reviewing media published in the past based off of Salomon. While her work itself is the central focus of my project, it’s important that I go through past responses to her work to see how they succeeded and/or failed in relaying her story. When first forming the idea for my project I found a noticeable lack in coverage of her work. While this is still certainly true, more in-depth digging and references provided by the Jewish Museum has led me to new movies and literature related to her work. The video-based media have been significantly easier to review and are likely the most relevant to my time-based artwork. The earliest movie about Salomon I have found is the 1981 movie Charlotte by director Frans Weisz. Weisz developed a documentary later in his career- Life? or Theatre? (2012)- based off of the titular work. Most recently, Eric Warin and Tahir Rana directed the animated movie also titled Charlotte in 2021. The larger issue at hand is finding the time to read the related literature. It seems unrealistic to go through all the available work, so I am instead prioritizing reviewing two of the most significant books. Seemingly the earliest biography of Salomon is To Paint Her Life (1994) by Mary Lowenthal Felstiner. The most recent book seems to be It’s My Whole Life by Susan Wider, published in 2022. By reviewing the oldest and most recent literature I hope to get a good overview of different understandings of her art and story. I also plan to use audiobooks to listen to the writings while developing my own work. By reorganizing my time and prioritizing the most important elements of my research I will be able to stay on target with my production timeline while still absorbing as much information as possible.