Patrick Bade
Women Artists in Germany: Kathë Kollwitz, Lotte Laserstein and Paula Modersohn-Becker

Patrick Bade - Women Artists in Germany: Kathë Kollwitz, Lotte Laserstein and Paula Modersohn-Becker

- I’m looking today at three women artists active in Germany in the early years of the 20th century. The three self-portraits here, Kathe Kollwitz on the left, Paula Modersohn-Becker in the middle and Lotte Laserstein on the right hand side. I mentioned in a previous lecture that German artists have produced an enormous, ever since Duhrer in the 15th century, German artists have often produced very interesting self-portraits, and that’s particularly true of women artists, actually women artists in general, for obvious sociological reasons that women in the past, before the 20th century, didn’t get out and about in the way that men did, didn’t have the opportunities to paint such variety of people and were often thrown back on their own resources and looking into the mirror for their inspiration. So we’re going to see quite a few self-portraits today by all three of these artists. Here are two very youthful self-portraits of Kathe Kollwitz. She was born Kathe Schmidt, a very common name, of course, in Germany, in the Baltic port of Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. Then it was in East Prussia, now it’s a Russian enclave next to Poland. Rather in the news, of course, for obvious reasons. She came from a very cultivated family. And in, when she was just 17, she went to Munich and she saw this picture by Rubens, ‘The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus’, which is a star picture in the Alte Pinakothek in Rubens. She was incredibly impressed by it, and this is one of the things that triggered her vocation to become an artist. There were a couple of surprising things about this.

Firstly, of course, Rubens is a supreme painterly painter. He’s a great master of the brush and of oil paint, and that was not to be Kathe Kollwitz’s way. She very soon discovered that oil painting was not for her, that she was primarily a graphic artist. And the other thing, surprising thing, really, is the subject matter, which is of a rape. She later, as we shall see, becomes the first woman to paint the theme of rape from a female rather than from a male perspective. Well, her parents were enlightened and liberal, and they allowed her to attend a woman’s art school in Berlin in, this is in the 1880s. And she had a very inspiring teacher, the man- This is a self-portrait of her teacher on the left. He is called Karl Stauffer-Bern and I think she got a great deal from him, artistic inspiration and technique. I mean, she always had a wonderful, somewhat academic technique, something that she shares very much, I would say with my final artist today, Lotte Laserstein. Karl Stauffer-Bern came to a very tragic and early end. He fell in love with the woman who you see on the right hand side. She was married, she was married to a Swiss banker. He was the founder of the ‘Credit Suisse’ which again, of course, is very much in the news at the moment because of its difficulties. He was pow- they absconded together and he was powerful enough to have them both apprehended and she was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, and he was sent to a prison and tragically they both committed suicide. Something that, I think, that must have had a very powerful impact on Kathe Schmidt, as she then was. He introduced her to two great graphic artists who would inspire her and be very important for her development. The first, of course, being Goya, long dead Spanish artist.

We’ve got two etchings by Goya on the middle and the right hand side, and an early etching by Kathe Kollwitz. As you can see, it’s called ‘At the Church Wall’. I’m sure you all know the origin of the phrase, ‘going to the wall’. In churches, up until the 19th century, very often didn’t have seats. So if you were old and frail and couldn’t stand, you went to the wall. You went to the side where you could sit and lean against the wall. This is the work of Max Klinger. Max Klinger was a artist who had an immense reputation at the end of the 19th century, as a painter and as a sculptor. His statue, his multicoloured, multi, polychrome statue of Klinger, of Beethoven, rather, was unveiled in 1902 in Vienna. Klimt made a ‘Beethoven Frieze’ to go around it, and was hailed by many people as one of the greatest works of art, ever. Nowadays, I think most people think it’s a big piece of kitsch. His painting’s not really that rated either, but he was a very remarkable graphic artist, and he developed a way of telling a story, a narrative over, he created cycles of etchings, and that’s what we shall see. That’s what Kathe Kollwitz also became famous for. This is the first in his series, ‘The Glove’ and it shows Klinger himself going to an ice rink and becoming obsessed by a beautiful Brazilian woman who, she skates off as you can see and she drops a glove and he picks up the glove. And over the series, in a very Freudian way, the glove takes on all sorts of fetishistic Freudian connotations here that the, he’s tossing around in his bed and the glove has swollen to enormous proportions. And then in the next one, this is, I suppose, afterwards, the glove reduced to a limp detumescent state. So very kind of extraordinary Freudian symbolism. But he was also made, there’s a series of prints, which he called ‘Dramen’, ‘Dramas’, which deal with ordinary people, the dramas in ordinary people’s lives. Domestic violence, as you can see on the left hand side.

And an impoverished young woman, it’s called, ‘Ein Schritt’, a step. She is taking her first step into prostitution. You may just be able to make out a bourgeois man standing in the dark on the left hand side. You can just see the glow from the tip of his cigar, and she is being lured into prostitution. So Kathe Kollwitz, I think, was intrigued by the idea that print etchings could be used in this way to develop this kind of narrative and to deal with big social and philosophical themes. This is Klinger on the left hand side. This is his image of the 1848 Revolution. And on the right hand side is a print by Kathe Kollwitz. The ‘Carmagnole’ of course, was a revolutionary song during the French Revolution. In 1891, she married Karl Kollwitz, who is a young doctor, rather an idealist, quite left wing as she was and continued to be, they both were. So this is what they looked like when they first met. And she moves with him to Berlin, and they live in a working class area of Berlin. This is where they, the street that they lived on. And that’s, he was immensely supportive of her work. They had two children, but he enabled her, I mean, this would’ve been rare at the time, I think. For most husbands would’ve thought, “Well, I’m the wage earner, I’m the doctor. You stay at home and you look after the children.” But she was allowed to really concentrate on her art and living in this tough, rough area of Berlin, she became fascinated by working class people, by the proletariat. She- And the fascination was as much aesthetic as it was political, that she saw beauty in these rough, earthy working class types. Two prints by, actually no, it’s an ink drawing on the right hand side with a print on the left hand side by Kathe Kollwitz. She took part in a competition where they were set a subject and the subject was seen from a novel by Emile Zola, about a strike.

Many people commenting on the bitterness of the strikes in France at the moment have referred back to these historic strikes in the 19th and early 20th century where French workers gained their rights, which they’re at the moment very unwilling to give up . And this was a scene of a brawl in a pub between two men over a woman. And this was her entry, which won a prize. And inspired by Klinger, she thought she would like to make a cycle of prints on a literary theme. And initially it was going to be Zola’s ‘Germinal’. But in 1892, I’ve mentioned this already, the German theatre was galvanised by the premiere of Gerhart Hauptmann’s play ‘The Weavers’ about an insurrection, an uprising and strike of weavers in the 1840s. And this became the theme of the great cycle of prints that made Kathe Kollwitz’s reputation. This one is entitled ‘Poverty’, the weavers were horribly exploited and really, really on the starvation line. And this shows a working class woman desperate over her sick and hungry child. She’s looking around at what’s going on in art around her, and certainly very aware of Edvard Munch, who is in Berlin in the mid 1890s. And I’m sure she was familiar with this print of ‘The Sick Child’ by Edvard Munch which you see on the right hand side. The theme of worrying over a sick child was of course, a popular one in novels. Think of all, the Little Dorrit’, in ‘Old Curiosity Shop’ of Dickens. And this painting, very popular painting, very famous at the time by Luke Fildes of a doctor, you can see him dressed as a middle class man, presumably rather like Kathe’s husband, Karl, looking over a child within a poor working class household. And another.

She made various versions of the different themes in the this. This is another version entitled ‘Poverty’ and ‘Death’ on the left hand side. And here again, I make a comparison between Kathe Kollwitz and Max Klinger from his series entitled ‘On Death’, showing death in its different forms. And again, Munch, she would’ve certainly been aware of pictures like these. Munch very, very obsessed by death. Of course, he came from a family, as he said, sickness, death, and insanity with the dark angels who hovered over his cradle with tuberculosis running through his family. So this, she works through the entire story here of the conspiracies, planning the insurrection and the strike here at the, this is the uprising when the strike breaks out, this is a drawing for the print in which the workers attack the house of the factory owner. Here is the print, which you can see is in reverse. And the final scene when the, the insurrection is brutally, indeed murderously put down and the protestors are shot. And here, this is the preliminary drawing, and here is the final print. So this series caused an absolute sensation when it was first exhibited, it was highly praised by Menzel, no less. And she won a gold medal. But that was actually set aside because the Kaiser Wilhelm II strongly disapproved of her work on both political and aesthetic grounds. Now, as I said, she’s completely committed by this point to being a graphic artist rather than a painter. And for a few years, nearly 1900’s, she is very experimental, trying out and also very interested in trying to introduce colour into her prints. Both her lithographs, this is a lithograph on the left hand side and a colour etching on the right hand side. And this is, I think this is a lithograph, it’s quite hard to tell actually from reproductions. This certainly is. She’s interested in the theme of the female nude. I don’t think she ever does male nudes quite in this way, but it’s a woman’s point of view. This is a very intimate, a very private scene, what Degas would call a ‘toilette’. And there is a Degas on the right hand side.

Once again, I’m quite sure she was very familiar with Degas’ work. And for comparison, we have a woman washing her hair by Kathe Kollwitz, top left by Toulouse-Lautrec, bottom left, and by Degas, bottom right. There’s a morbid side to her work. I think there are actually three museums devoted to Kathe Kollwitz. I’ve seen two of them. There’s one in Berlin and there’s one in Cologne. And if you go around a large exhibition of her work or you go to one of these museums, it has a very powerful impact. You don’t come out necessarily feeling very good about life as they’re very dark, tragic, morbid. And she’s very preoccupied with the theme of a mother mourning a dead child. Of course, this is exactly contemporary with Mahler’s song cycle. Songs on the death of children, the ‘Kindertotenlieder’, which Alma, of course, was very unhappy about Mahler setting. She had a premonition and she proved right, of course, when one of their daughters died of, is it scarlet fever, I think it was very soon after he wrote the ‘Kindertotenlieder’. Again, a comparison, Kathe Kollwitz on the left with a print by Munch, which I’ve shown you before, called ‘Vampire’, and she certainly would’ve been familiar with that. And so she tries out different, different methods, different textures, different colour effects. And also, as I said, she’s very socially engaged, so dealing with themes of poverty, injustice, domestic violence and so on. And this is a print she made of, as you can see, it’s entitled ‘Uprising’. And you can see the drawing on the left hand side and the twin print on the right hand side, which leads on to her second great cycle of prints, which she made in the early years of the century, and which were finally exhibited in 1908, showing the peasants revolt of 1520.

It was hailed by Marxists as a forerunner of the great revolutions of the late 18th and the 19th century. Again, a revolt that was extremely brutally put down. So this is what the early sketches, you can see the- the hard life of the peasants, the brutal way in which they’re treated. And this, the title of this is ‘Raped’ and it’s important and interesting, I would say, as the first time that the subject has been treated from a woman’s point of view. The subject of rape is actually one of the commonest and most popular subjects in Western art, particularly in the Baroque period. This here is ‘The Rape of the Sabines’ by Rubens. And it’s one of a pair of pictures. This picture is in London in the National Gallery. And it was independent, the pair that went with it is in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and it shows ‘Massacre of the Innocence’. And the 17th century commentator, Roger de Piles, saw these two pictures together and he said, ah, yes, they’re contrasting pictures, that the ‘Massacre of the Innocence’, of course, is a tragic subject and ‘The Rape of the Women’ is a jolly subject as far as he’s concerned. And certainly Rubens seems to be taking a rather gloating attitude to the rape of all these gorgeous, bare breasted ladies. So, and this, I think, again, how strange it was that it was a Ruben’s painting of a rape. Clearly, I mean, Ruben’s attitude to the subject is, it’s an excuse for him to show off the female body, to really gloat over the female body. So again, it’s an erotic picture. It’s a picture that’s meant to turn you on and you are meant to enjoy it. So, whereas, I think, Kathe Kollwitz shows the brutal reality of rape. This is one, an image connected with, again, the peasant uprising and the lighting and the way that the shadow is used behind the figure, I would say again, shows the influence of Munch. More images from the peasants uprising and its suppression, prisoners. Now, 1914, that the First World War breaks out, and as I’ve said before, on all sides, people greeted it, the outbreak of war, optimistically.

They had no idea really how terrible it was going to be. Everybody thought it would be over by Christmas. And we know a lot about what Kathe Kollwitz thought from her diaries and her letters. And even she was swept up with patriotic enthusiasm when the war first broke out. People really believed, the French believed, of course, that French civilization was superior. The Germans thought they were superior. The British thought they were superior, and they were all confident they were going to win quickly. Her attitude changed very quickly when her sons were drawn into the army and her younger, no, it was the older son, I think it’s the older son, Peter Kollwitz, who you can see on the right hand side, actually died on the western front. And this was an absolutely horrific, traumatic blow. And it turned her instantly into a rabid pacifist, which she remained for the rest of her life. And this is her image of a woman receiving news of the death of her husband on the front, on the right hand side. And grieving mothers, grieving parents becomes a great theme of her work from now on. This, a very moving image of the mothers of both sides embracing one another in grieving for their loss. It was a theme that she developed in various different graphic media and also in sculpture. This one is called the ‘Tower of Mothers’. The bronze on the left hand side, it was a very fine sculpture. It’s interesting, she’s a graphic artist and she’s a sculptor. She’s not a painter.

This is a self-portrait of herself grieving over her son Peter. And she made these sculptures of grieving parents for the graveyard in Belgium where her son Peter is buried. And this very, here she’s clearly referencing the Christian iconography of the Pieta, the Virgin grieving for Christ, the most famous version being perhaps the Michelangelo in the Vatican. This now in a war memorial in the centre of Berlin. So she was very politically engaged. Her sympathies were left and she was very affected by the murder of the left-wing leader, Karl Liebknecht. I know Judy has talked a lot about these left-wing, these brief abortive left-wing revolutions in Munich and Berlin at the end of the First World War were both very bloodily put down. And how, of course, in both cases, the leaders were of Jewish origin, although they didn’t necessarily identify themselves as Jews, but in Berlin it was Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Both of whom were brutally murdered. And this, you can see this drawing is entitled ‘Memorial to Karl Liebknecht’. And this is the print that she made from that drawing. So some of her work, her more obviously political images of this period of the 1920s. It really, I mean, I can see that they’re really kind of prop- they’re propaganda, whether you rate them aesthetically as great works of art, but I think she would say that’s not the point she wants to get across. She’s not trying to make something beautiful. She’s, this shows a mother unable to feed her children. And you can see that here, this is Vienna. ‘Wiem Stirbt! Rettet seine Kinder!’ Vienna is starving, there was terrible famine in Vienna at the end of the First World War. And on the right hand side, there is an image entitled ‘Help Russia’. 1933, when the Nazis come to power, of course, she is in a very dodgy position. This self-portrait, wonderful self-portrait, all the way through, I think her self-portraits are absolutely extraordinary.

This one is dated 1933, the year that the Nazis took power. So, she was in deep, deep disfavour, not really so much stylistically or aesthetically, but because of her left wing views. So she was one of many artists who was forbidden to exhibit. It’s what they called a ‘Malverbot’. And so, and she’s also an example of what the Germans call the ‘inner emmigration’. Those people who could not, who remained in Germany, who didn’t flee abroad, but then completely withdrew from public life. This one, this is the following year, 1934, when I suppose the aesthetic and policies of the, you know, 1934 is the year that Hitler made his denunciation of all forms of modern art at the Nuremberg rally. And he insisted that art was only there to serve his regime. So this is a self-portrait and it’s called ‘The Hand of God’. So she clearly feels in a way that for her the end is nigh and there are these very tragic, pathetic self-portraits in profile on the right hand side with her husband Karl, who predeceased her. And then of course, to her absolute horror, her grandchildren, actually one of her grandchildren, she had two grandchildren. One was a doctor and he survived and the other one was taken into the Wehrmacht and died. He’s also called Peter. So she had a son and a grandson who died in each of the world’s wars, both called Peter. And the title of this, ‘The Seed is for Planting and Must Not Be Used’. Now move on to my second artist Paula Modersohn-Becker who is a generation younger or half a generation younger, also some of- this is self-portrait and a photograph.

And she also, quite a high proportion of her work are self-portraits to early self-portraits here. She was born into- this very extraordinary nude self-portrait that’s somewhat rare, I would say, with all women artists. And this, yet this maybe, I suppose, the first ever pregnant nude self-portrait made in 1907 when she was in the pregnancy that would eventually lead to her tragic and premature death. Came from quite a wealthy bourgeois background. Her father was a successful railway engineer. She was born in Dresden but moved to Breman as a small child. This is the house where she grew up. You can see they’re obviously fairly well off and they, like the parents of Kollwitz, they were open-minded liberal and they allowed her to go to the artist’s colony of Worpswede in the late 1890s. These artist colonies were springing up all over Europe at this time in France and England and Germany. And you can see these rather arts and crafts olde worlde houses in the, that were inhabited by the artists, were artist’s studios. And this is where she met her husband, Otto Modersohn. There you can see the two of them together. Now this is a painting by Otto Modersohn, which is very typical of the kind of art that was produced, being produced in Worpswede which is rather decorative, slightly stylized landscape full of ‘Stimmung’. ‘Stimmung’ is the German word for mood. So ‘Stimmung Malerei’, mood so, painting is not, you can’t quite translate into English. This is what he did. And this is what the other artist of Worpswede did. Quite charming. But really here’s another well-known artist of Worpswede, Heinrich Vogeler on the left hand side. But as soon as you compare that and it’s charming, a little bit like a children’s book illustration that you did, of course, illustrate children’s books a little bit symbolist, Art Nouveau, fantasy , bit whimsical. And then you look at Paula Modersohn-Becker painting a similar subject on the right hand side, you can see straight away that she didn’t really quite fit in. Her work is much more modern. It’s much bolder in style and technique. In fact, of the three artists, I hugely admire all three artists I’m talking about today, I think they’re all wonderful. But the only one who you could say was stylistically innovatory or advanced was Paula Modersohn-Becker.

In some ways she conforms to what we expect of women artists of earlier periods in her subject matter that she, like any woman from a bourgeois background, of course, her life’s experience were quite limited to the domestic sphere. So before she got married, long before she got pregnant, she was very interested in painting children and they’re wonderful, her paintings of children, they’re not at all sentimental. Even this one of a little girl in a garden with a glass sphere seems to me, I suppose it’s, this is on the brink of sentimental, but there’s a kind of a boldness and earthiness that takes it beyond the sickly sweet. She’s also, before she, as a child herself, very interested in the theme of maternity. Another very remarkable image. First I think of what looks like a pregnant woman with a baby, nude. But she also is intrigued by old age and the old age of women. And there are very moving paintings of old women. But she in, she feels stifled in Worpswede, in Germany. In 1899, she goes to Paris and for a while, she studies with Rodin. I hope she was able to fend off his unwanted advances. He was a bit, the Harvey Weinstein of the period. He expected all the women around him to offer themselves up to him. But I’ve never read that was the case actually with Paula Modersohn-Becker. But in Paris, she’s very taken with the work of Gauguin and she returns again to Paris from 1905 to 1907 and she’s very, very productive in this period. And a lot of her greatest work date from this time. And you can see her, you know, Paris was so exciting, so stimulating. Now I don’t think of all the other artists arriving around this time, Modigliani in 1906, Chagall in 1910. It was, ‘Ecole de Paris’ was really having an incredible liftoff and it was the revolution of the ‘fauves’ Matisse, Derain, in 1905. And I think she’s taking on all of, taking on board all of this.

So there’s Paula Modersohn-Becker on the left. I think if you look at the way the legs and the feet are painted and the heavy contouring and the flat stylization, it’s clear that she’s thinking of Gauguin. Gauguin himself, of course, very influenced by the earlier Pierre de Chavannes which you see bottom in the middle. Now looking at these two, you’re probably familiar with the Matisse goldfish bowl on the right hand side. And you are probably thinking, “Ah, well she took that idea from Matisse.” It’s very similar, isn’t it? The treatment of the bowl and the fish. But I have to tell you that she painted the picture on the left in 1907, and Matisse painted his ‘Goldfish’ in 1910. Maybe Matisse knew her work and was influenced by it. It was not impossible. And there have been suggestions that Picasso knew her work and was interested in it. So this, both these pictures date from 1906, there’s the very famous Picasso ‘Portrait of Gertrude Stein’, which was a major turning point in his work where he’s leaving behind the delicacy and the poetic qualities of the Blue and Rose periods and entering a period of Primitivism, the deliberate crudeness. And the painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker of a friend on the left hand side is the same year. It’s 1906. So who knows who’s influenced by the other or maybe it’s just a parallel development drawing on common sources. 1907. It’s detailed from the, perhaps the most innovated and influential and radical painting of early Modernism, Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ and a painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker of the same year, 1907, on the left. Whether she knew that or not, I think it’s probably not very likely because Picasso didn’t exhibit ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ for some years afterwards. Well, it’s perfectly possible that she went to his studio in the Bateau-Lavoir in 1907. So this is a painting of her husband, Otto Modersohn, and of course, he was not happy understandably, that she was off in Paris and he sent her rather pathetic letters saying he couldn’t really cope, you know, with cooking and darning and all the things that women are supposed to do.

And he sends her lots of moaning letters and she eventually is sort of pressurised into going back to him and quickly becomes pregnant. And the child is born healthy and it’s a successful birth. But a few days later she died of an embolism. And I’m sure there are many doctors listening who could explain this better than I am. But I’ve read that it was partly because of the way that women, childbirth was treated at the time that women were expected to stay still for several days and this is what allowed an embolism to happen. And this is the monument to her that created after her death with the child sitting on top of her. Why do we need that? Ah, now yes, Lotte Laserstein, she is again a generation on. She’s born in 1898 and she is born into a bourgeois Berlin Jewish family. Her work, I was introduced to it by a former student and very dear friend Cheryl Tannon in, I wonder if she remembers. It was 1987 and she was collecting at the time and she said, “Oh, I’ve come across this amazing artist and there’s an exhibition of her work at a gallery in Bond Street,” and she wanted me to go with her. So, you know, I thought, why not? So I went along with her and I was absolutely blown away by Lotte Laserstein’s work. I’d never heard of her before then. In fact, she was still alive. She lived into her nineties. But she from, she’d had a successful period in Germany in the late twenties, early thirties. She had been able to flee to Sweden in 1937 and had, was totally like so many of these artists was totally forgotten. So many of those artists, musicians who had to flee from Weimar, Germany in 1933. Even if they survived and had long lives, it was often quite sad, they faced neglect and oblivion. Here she is. This is, photograph must date from 1933 at work on the final masterpiece of her Weimar period. So she’s a very long lived artist.

As I said, she lived well into her nineties and her work is technically superb. It’s of quite extraordinary technical quality. And actually she never really loses that technique. Even the post-war stuff is always good. I mean, I’d love to have one, if I got the chance of buying a Lotte Laserstein from any period, I would leap at it. But her, the chief interest of her work is of this period of the mid twenties to 1933. And it, the interest of the work is, as I said, not really in the technique, excellent, though it is, This is a Lotte Laserstein on the right hand side. And on the left is a mid 19th century painting by Wilhem Leibl. And you can see that the technique is very, very similar indeed. I’m sure she must have studied Wilhelm Leibl very carefully. She hasn’t really moved on technically or stylistically from the mid 19th century. What makes her work in this period so interesting, is her vision of the world and her subject matter. Of course, it’s a very fascinating period. I’m going to be talking more about it culturally, Weimar period. It fascinates us both because so much, so rich, so interesting, so innovative. But it also fascinates us in a rather dark way because we know what is going to happen next. Here, so this is so much as I said, despite the 19th century technique, the vision is completely of it’s time. This is a self-portrait, disturbing, ambiguous, sexually ambiguous. It’s very clear that she identified as a lesbian. You can see, you know, the truculent look in her face. And, of course, the haircut, which really emphasises a certain muscular. Here is another marvellous self portrait. Love this one, where she’s, it’s called, ‘Mackie und Ich’, Mackie Messer. This is a reference to the 1928 hit of Brecht and Weill, the ‘Dreigroschenoper’ which I’m going to be talking about in a week or so. So this is again, a painting with a very ambiguous undertone to it.

And here she shows herself with her lover, a woman called Rose Traute. This again, this is again, such an image of the period with the, showing the, this the relationship between the two women and you can find. This is a British artist called, she called herself ‘Gluck’ but her real name was Hannah Gluckstein, again from a middle class, very respectable, assimilated Jewish background. But, and she’s showing her us here, on the left hand side, in profile with her lover. And she was absolutely militant in her, I mean she, non-binary sexuality that she, I mean she was absolutely outraged if she was described as Ms. Gluckstein, and she called herself ‘Gluck’ which is neither male nor female. There are very interesting parallels, I think, between Lotte Laserstein and Tamara de Lempicka. Both of them are, their great period, their interesting period coincides exactly from the mid 1920s up until 1933. de Lempicka is also very long lived. Her work after the mid 1930s is frankly absolutely terrible. What can you say? But she is interesting. Again, she captures, of course, the mood of Berlin in the twenties, is very different from ‘Les Annees Folles’ in France, the jazz age in France. Both I suppose hedonistic, but there’s a gritty, a darker element to the culture of Berlin in the same period. These are quintessential images of ‘Les Annees Folles’ ‘The Crazy Years’ in Paris in the 1920s, again of evidently same sex relations. This is the hairstyle, of course, of the period emphasises this, this de Lempicka on the left hand side and a British artist called Alfred Wolmark of Russian Jewish background, and artists are very interested in because I lucky enough to have two paintings by him. In fact, the one I have, I should have put it in actually. It’s in the room next to me in the dark. It’s also of two women standing together on a beach. Tamara on the left, Lotte on the right. I’d, you know, I’d be quite interested to know what you think about this comparison. Because there’s something, there’s something very slick and very fashionable about Tamara and Lotte Laserstein.

I think it’s, the concept of truth in art is a very abstract, really what is truth in art. But to me, Lotte Laserstein, what makes her art so fascinating is a certain gritty truthfulness. I see truth in this. And much as I love Tamara as well, Tamara’s huge fun, I don’t see any truthfulness in her work. It’s all kind of flashy modishness. So Lotte Laserstein is, she primarily paints women and she’s interested in the new modern woman. So out of the terrible tragedy and waste of the First World War, I suppose, one little crumb of comfort might be that it gave an opportunity to, many new opportunities to women to get to escape from this, the slavery of domesticity if only to get into a factory or become in the First World War. Of course, they needed women in the factories or to replace men in a wide range of jobs. And in the 1920s, you could, there were on a step up, you could of a young woman who was reasonably bright and intelligent, could become a stenographer or a secretary. And these sort of women fascinate Lotte Laserstein. And here you see a Lotte Laserstein of a woman sitting in a cafe alone. She seems a very modern type, doesn’t she? Although I suppose you can also trace this image back to a 19th century image, this very famous Manet on the right hand side inspired by a novel of Zola, ‘L'Assommoir’ which opens with a scene of a young woman sitting alone in a cafe. That would’ve been daring, I must say, the Manet would’ve been thought to be a shocking picture. And here is another very young, modern, young woman with short hair. Hair was, you know, of course, hugely, when women during the First World War and just after, cut their long hair off. It was a huge cultural shock for many people. But it was a gesture of rebellion and independence.

And also, the new young woman, she was asserting herself with the use of makeup as you see in this picture by Lotte Laserstein. Young women, modern women, Lotte Laserstein on the left hand side. Tamara de Lempicka on the right hand side, on the phone. So, of course women, these are all liberating things for women. Phones, that the fact that women could drive cars may give them independence and also sport. That was a sign of modernity. If you read the fashion magazines of the period like ‘Vogue’, and you’ll find endless images of women. Now if you think of the 19th century there was no women, way women could play. If you’re wearing a crinoline, you know, and you are, or even as the end of the 19th century with all the kind of corsetry and upholstery, it would’ve been very difficult to move, let alone play sport. But in the 1920s, you have images of fashionable women skiing and playing tennis and riding horses and all sorts of things. So there is Lotte Laserstein on the left and a ‘Vogue’ cover on the right. And the nude. Of course, the nude had been, the female nude had been absolutely central to western art since the 15th century, since the Renaissance. But it basically, the female nude was pretty well always ‘Page Three’, a pinup, a passive female figure offered up for the delectation of the male viewer. So this painting of a rather masculine looking Lotte Laserstein painting a female nude is obviously from a sexual point of view, quite subversive. Especially when you compare it with the kind of old master image which inspired it, like this ‘Venus’ by Titian, bottom right. She does occasionally paint men. And even then, I think, she’s quite subversive and edgy in her vision.

I think she’s having fun, really. This painting of a motorcyclist with the concept of masculinity. Of course, she’s borrowed the uber masculine legs apart pose of Holbein’s ‘Henry VIII’. And I think there, whether consciously or not, that you’ve got this very suggestive phallic gas cylinder behind the man on the right hand side. So I, it’s a, I think it’s a wonderful image, but it’s slightly disturbing and also quite funny. This is the, her final masterpiece in Berlin recently acquired by, I think it’s the National Gallery in Berlin that have it. And it’s wonderful. I pity she didn’t live long enough to see that. But she deserves that honour, I think. It’s a very ambitious picture. You think, “Well where would she have gone from this if she’d been allowed to remain in Germany?” You can see that it’s, of course, in a way, a modern last supper. The composition borrowed from Renaissance depictions of ‘The Last Supper’. So, but, so she was, I suppose, left high and dry by the Nazis, would no longer have been able to exhibit publicly in Germany. She had the great good fortune in 1937 to be invited to stage a one man or one woman show, whatever you want to call it, in Stockholm. So this enabled her not only to escape from Germany, and as you know, Sweden was the, unlike Norway and Denmark was never occupied by the Germans and was a refuge to many German Jews during the Second World War. So from that point of view, she was tremendously lucky. She was also very lucky in that the bulk of her work, from her best period, she was able to take out with her to Sweden. And that’s why it survives and that’s why we know her. If that had not happened, my guess is that her work would’ve disappeared without trace. It would all have been destroyed. She tried desperately to get her mother and her sister out of Berlin, but didn’t succeed. The mother was murdered in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. The sister, this is a very, very interesting story.

The sister went into hiding with two other women. They were hidden in a back garden, in a garden shed and living, you can imagine through the Berlin winter in the most dire conditions with no heating and sometimes with no water. In fact, her sister died from this ordeal. She wasn’t murdered by the Nazis. She died in inverted commas, ‘of natural causes’. And one of the women committed suicide in 1945 and one of the women survived. But that is, I mean, this of course there, it’s so extraordinary that though I can’t remember, I read what the exact figure is, whether I, the figure of 3000 sticks in my head but maybe that’s too high of Jews who survived in hiding in Berlin, through the Second World War and it’s reckoned that they had for every person who survived in hiding, there had to be 30 people who knew about it and didn’t betray them. And so, I mean, that, that is for me that the idea of it in a way, it sends chills down me and I, maybe this would be a very good subject, I couldn’t do it, but for somebody to talk to lockdown about the people who survived in hiding in Berlin, it’s a very interesting story. But I’m going to come to finish now and see what we have in the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

By this artist there, I, you know, what you’re probably adjourn, I think you must be, are you talking here about Kathe Kollwitz, though I must say, I think that Lotte Laserstein also uses light and dark in a very interesting way. Viscerally powerful, that’s a good description of Kathe Kollwitz, definitely.

Maybe of interest, especially to people in North America know, to know that in 2015, a donation of 170 prints and drawings and sculptures of Kathe Kollwitz was given to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. What, lucky them. That’s wonderful. One of the largest collections of her work outside of Germany. Yes, she was very involved in the actual process of making the prints and I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I’m pretty certain she must have made additions as that was really the norm in the 20th century.

Rabid pacifist. Yeah, no, why not? I’m not, certainly not being negative if you think that, I’m a pacifist myself, I’m a rabid pacifist myself. I absolutely believe in pacifism. This is, beg to differ, regarding rape. The original meaning was seizure, carrying away. You, it’s very funny, you remind me of my childhood because I remember seeing that painting of Rubens and asking my mother’s boyfriend, what does it mean? What does rape mean? I would’ve been about six at the time. And he said to me, what? He gave me the definition that you’ve just given one, to carry away by force. But I don’t agree with you, I’m afraid. I think it, I think the Rubens and many other Baroque rape pictures are meant to be erotic and they’re meant to be enjoyed in that way. That’s my view. But you may differ.

That again, Kathe Kollwitz prints donated to Art Gallery of Ontario. Thank you, Nick.

This is Judith who saw an exhibition of Kathe Kollwitz in London 45 years ago. She is a fantastic artist. What can you say? I mean, last time I saw a lot of her work was in the museum in Cologne, which is entirely devoted to her. Gabriele Munter, Marianne von Werefkin will come into my, well, at least Gabriele Munter, I’m not sure about Marianne von Werefkin, will come into my lecture on the next one, actually, which is on Expressionism. I didn’t really feel that they fit. It fitted into the lecture I gave tonight.

Yes, isn’t that amazing to think that the ‘Demoiselles’ was bought by a couturier, Jacques Doucet. There are several versions of that Holbein, it may not be the one I showed you that’s in the exhibition in Cleveland.

This is Brenda, who is obviously like me, a Lotte Laserstein, the others are shown in 2017 while it was Agnews where the show was in 1987. So Agnews obviously played an important part in her rediscovery as, of an artist. The background of the Last Supper painting is actually Potsdam, which is, of course, a little distance from Berlin. And you, this is somebody who knows somebody who lived through the war in Berlin.

Katrine, she also, well yes, Lotte Laserstein, she deserves to be so much better known. As I said, much that I like Tamara de Lempicka, I even wrote a book about her and you know, if you want to buy a Tamara de Lempicka, you are talking millions. But if you could find a Lotte Laserstein, it’s not in that league as far as money is concerned. And it seems to me that, essentially, she’s a better artist. The hidden Jews who survived. I think it’d be a great subject. Maybe I’ll talk to Trudy about it. We’d need to find somebody who’s really done the research and knows the material.

Oh, this, I didn’t know there was a novel about Paula Modersohn-Becker. It’s a good story, she would be a good subject. A book called ‘The Last Jews in Berlin’.

Barbara, she loves these painters and other. It’s a very, you know, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I think there’s a, I’m interested, Barbara, that you like German painters. Well, when I studied art history in London, of course, the emphasis was on French art. Nobody really was interested in German art.

Thank you, Kathy. And yeah, at , of course they have works by her.

Thank you all very much and I will move on to Expressionism, I think, it’s my next lecture. And I’ll see you again on Sunday.